


Blast Into The Past

by MonPetitTresor



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Angelic Grace, But he learns, Enochian, Good Big Brother Dean, Grace Sharing, Healing, M/M, Nice Lucifer, Recovery, Sam forgets a lot, Season/Series 04, The Cage, Time Travel Fix-It, Torture, Weekly Updates, and MIchael too, who learned his lesson
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-14
Updated: 2016-04-23
Packaged: 2018-05-20 09:39:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 17
Words: 57,905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6001191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MonPetitTresor/pseuds/MonPetitTresor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Cage was never meant to hold a human. It was meant for one archangel, not two, and definitely not a human soul. Little by little Sam's soul was being destroyed by the torture the Cage inflicted on it. Lucifer and Michael joined together and, with their combined grace, pieced together Sam Winchester's soul and sent him out of the Cage and into the past in the hopes that he can stop this whole thing before it even starts.</p>
<p>Only, when Sam lands, things don't quite go so well. He's not all that sure that this isn't another torture the Cage has provided for him. He's in the past, right after Dean got out of Hell, and he's nowhere near the same man he was before. He can barely remember how to function as a human. It's going to take his family and a little help from a surprised archangel for Sam to start to recover. He doesn't have much time, though, because the apocalypse is still coming and the angels are fighting to get Lucifer free. Can one broken man manage to change the past? Or are they doomed to repeat their same mistakes over and over again?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> As of right now this story is going to be updated weekly. I'm focusing mainly on my Fledgling verse (the current story in it is almost done) so this story will be on weekly updates until such time as I can devote more steady attention to it. Thanks, guys! I hope you understand

“Are you sure this is going to work?”

It wasn’t the first time that Lucifer had asked that question. He’d asked time and time again and gotten the same answer each and every time. “I don’t know.” Michael told him. He sounded a little more annoyed than he had the last time he’d answered it – just moments ago. “It’s not like we have had the chance to _practice_ this, brother.”

The light of the Morningstar pulsed bright within the darkness of his Cage. Sheltered within the arms and wings of his True Form, another light pulsed, softer and less vibrant, yet bright in its own way. Both archangels froze and turned their attention to that smaller light. Michael reached out and tender fingers stroked the light, watching as it curled around him without ever breaking free of Lucifer.      The two pressed in close and cradled that light between them. This tiny little light, broken and shattered and barely pieced back together with bits of their grace, the remnants of the amazing being that had brought them here to begin with.

“We’re running out of time.” Lucifer said.

They both knew it was true. Sam Winchester’s soul wouldn’t last much longer here. They’d held it together for as long as they could, using bits of their grace to keep his soul as whole as they could make it while the magic of the cage continued to try and rip apart something that was never meant to be contained here to begin with. They’d held on to hope for as long as they could, protecting him with everything they had, hoping that after Castiel had pulled Sam’s body from the cage he would realize that he’d left his soul behind and come back for it. But no one came, and Sam was out of time. He’d lasted so, so long in here. Too long. But the cage was killing him.

“There’s no telling when this will send him to.” Michael pointed out. “It’s going to take most of our energy to get him _out_.”

Lucifer drew Sam’s soul in even closer and stroked tender fingers over it. “I know. Hopefully it’s enough.”

‘Most’ was an optimistic bet. They knew the risks of what they were about to attempt. The brothers knew what it could do to them. If they were lucky, it wouldn’t matter. If their plan worked, then what they did here would become nothing more than a ghost of a memory in Sam’s mind.

They were out of time. The two pressed closer together and they shared one last look, one more mingling of grace that was far more intimate than any human gesture or words. Michael and Lucifer mingled their graces and shared a final smile. Then, cradling the light of Sam Winchester in their hands, they lifted him up high, pushing a thing that was never meant for the cage against the weakest portion of it, a place it had taken them over a thousand years to find. Then they poured their combined grace into him and, with more Faith than either had shown in a very long time, they _pushed_.

The light was seen all through Hell. On every level, every corner, the light of the two most powerful archangels surged.

When it faded, half of Hell had been burned out, and the cage was empty.

* * *

_It was a blur of light and pain and too-tight, too-hot, pressing against his skin and ripping through his insides. He was moving and he didn’t know where. Everything was changing. There was screaming – his, theirs? He never knew anymore – and agony slicing over his soul in a pain he hadn’t known existed until the cage._

_He was being ripped apart and only the grace in him kept the pieces together as he tumbled and hurtled through the light and the pain._

* * *

The world came alive in a mess of sound and sensation. Sam knew it, in a way he felt he hadn't known in so long, and it terrified him all the more for it. He knew the noise around him was noise, knew the strange sensation of something against his skin, knew the feel of air dragging in past his lips and to his lungs. Yet at the same time there was so much of it that was foreign to him. He knew the air drawing in, yet couldn’t understand how there was even air to begin with. He knew the noise around him was some sort of sound – that he heard with his _ears_ – yet what that sound was he had no idea. He knew that _something_ touched his skin and yet - what was it? What was this sensation that was soft and strange and... not-pain. It didn't hurt. But the only not-pain, the only things that didn't hurt, were Michael and Lucifer, and this wasn't them. He knew the feel of them better than he knew anything. Better even than he knew himself.

Sam – that's who he was. _That_ he knew. Even if he didn't know the rest about himself, he knew that. He was Sam. Samuel Winchester. Lucifer never let him forget that. He crooned it to him when the dark was long and the pain was fading. Crooned stories in that musical voice of a boy named Sam and his amazing brother who had saved the world form another pair of brothers too blinded to see the truth.

The sound around Sam grew louder and he flinched from it. What was that noise? His hands came up to slap over his ears and he was stunned to discover that he even had hands. That they were _real_. Not only real, they could move. He could move them and cover his ears and the noise went quieter.

Sam had felt torture, he knew pain, and he knew there was no way to hide from it. No matter how he covered ears that were no longer there or curled up a body that was really only a mental projection, as Michael said, to cover up what the mind could not perceive, none of it stopped the pain.

The world was dark and that was fine. That was familiar. He didn't want to open his eyes anyways. Because if he felt like _this_ than it meant that he wasn't with Lucifer and Michael. The cage had gotten him again and he didn't want to see what it had conjured up for him.

The cage wasn’t made for humans, Lucifer had explained to him once. It was made to house an archangel. _One_. Not two archangels and a human. While space inside the cage felt infinite, it wasn’t. But it was large enough that sometimes Sam got lost. Sometimes it pulled him into different places and tucked him down inside of his head and – the things he went through, the tortures it inflicted, were so much worse than anything he’d known possible. It got so deep inside him Sam never knew it wasn’t real until Lucifer found him again and pulled him out of it. Always him, never Michael. The only thing that allowed Lucifer to reach him was the connection of archangel to vessel. Only that allowed him to step in and save Sam over and over again.

Usually he didn’t know that he was trapped inside himself until after Lucifer pulled him out. So…how did he know this time? Unless, maybe he was learning. Maybe the grace that he was being given was making him strong enough to see. Even if right now it felt weak and tired and strangely not all there.

If that was the case, he would just have to keep being strong. He’d have to hold out until they found him again and pulled him back. Whatever this torture was, whatever they hoped to do to him by making him relive this part of his life, he would just have to hold on until Lucifer and Michael found him. Then they’d take him out of here again and he’d be safe. Or, as safe as any of them were down there.

Something touched Sam and he didn't stop the scream that ripped free. he'd learned long ago there was no point in that. The scream tore past his lips and ripped through his lungs and made his ears ring with the pain he was more familiar with.

The other noise around him stopped and whatever was touching him went away. That, more than anything else, threw him. What was this? What was going on? This wasn't...none of this was right. None of this was how things happened. Pain didn't go away. It didn't stop unless the archangels found him and made it stop. So what...what was this?

Sam blinked his eyes open only to slam them back shut once more. There was _light_. Where was he? What nightmare had the cage thrown him into?

Something in that strange noise called out again, only this time it was softer, a little more hesitant. Not loud and painful but low and worrying like Michael's could get sometimes. Slowly, hesitantly, Sam opened his eyes again. The light was still there, so blindingly bright, and he had to blink over and over to be able to get his vision to clear. When he did, he found that he wasn’t alone. Someone was crouching down in front of him and there were eyes only a foot away from his own.

Immediately he scrambled backwards and was stunned to find that his body actually _moved._ It moved across this strange soft not-wings thing until suddenly he was over open air and crashing down onto something hard. Pain jolted through him, up his elbows and in his head where he’d connected hard, and he heard the noise come back again. When Sam looked up he found that person moving towards him and his soul ached when he saw who it was that came rushing towards him. The one face he loved and hated to see in these moments. Somehow when he was sucked into these things, his mind, the cage, whatever it was that controlled this, it always knew how to hurt him the most, and this was a face that had been used to torture him so many damn times. _Dean._

Dean was rushing around the not-wings and coming to crouch by him again and Sam tried to move away once more. If it’d worked once, it could work again, right? He could get away.

Sometimes he’d been able to run in his tortures. They always caught him, though.

Only, when he moved, Dean _stopped_. He stopped by the foot of the bed and didn’t come lunging towards him, didn’t come smashing his fists into him and shouting and screaming words that Sam had long since stopped understanding but had never lost their power to stop hurting. Instead he stayed by the foot of the soft not-wings and held his hands out. The noise – it was Dean speaking, saying something in a language Sam knew he should know an yet didn’t understand – wasn’t angry or threatening. “It’s all right, Sammy. It’s okay. Whatever’s going on, dude, it’s all right. I just need you to relax for me.”

Sam knew he should know the sounds that Dean was making. _Words,_ the little bit of grace inside him supplied. That wasn’t just noise or sound; it was words. But they sounded like gibberish to him.

Tilting his head, Sam pressed his back against the hard thing behind him and watched the illusion of his brother frown.

“What’s going on?” Dean’s voice changed again, sounding stranger this time. It had that lilt that Sam knew, he remembered, meant a question. “Sam, what’s wrong?”

Though he could tell the words were a question, he had no idea what that question was. English had long ago stopped making sense. Everything he said, everything he thought, everything that was spoken to him that actually _mattered_ , was in Enochian. It was all Michael and Lucifer spoke and Sam had taken to it quickly until English was just a thing of the past for him. Why listen to it? Why pay attention? It only made the torture hurt more when he knew what was being said to him.

But he knew that questions like these always required an answer. Just as he knew that there was only one answer he could give. It was something that was deep in him, something that had never gone away. Sometimes he was still saying it when Lucifer pulled him out and cradled him close. The archangel always hated the sound of it. The music of his grace would dim and turn into something heartbreakingly sad when Sam would whisper it over and over. “ _No_.”

“What, Sam? What is it?”

“No.” Sam repeated. His throat felt raw and his voice was barely a croak, but he said it. The only answer he knew, the only one he could give. “No.”

“No what, dude?” Dean’s voice deepened and Sam knew that sound as well. _Angry_. This was a sound he knew well. He’d played this scene out so many times before. Dean always got angry with him and then, then came the pain.

Closing his eyes, Sam embraced the dark once more, waiting for what he knew would come. Tears filled his eyes and slipped unchecked down his cheeks. “No.” he whispered, his only word, over and over and over. “No.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Should be obvious, but, mentions of torture in here. If those details sqiuck you, you probably shouldn't read this story at all

“I don’t know what’s going on, Bobby. There’s something wrong with Sam.”

Sam watched curiously from his little hidey spot between the two soft things. He hadn’t moved since he’d fallen down here. What was the point? There was no way he could see to get out of this room without first having to go past Dean and he wasn’t dumb enough to try that. Besides, he had no idea what game was being played here. This was nothing like what Sam remembered happening to him before. There’d been no real pain except for when he’d fallen or when the noise got too loud.

This was all so confusing. Nothing was happening the way it was supposed to. By now, without fail, there should’ve been knives and blood. There should’ve been _pain_. Horrible things screamed at him in angry voices. The last time Dean had been in one of these torture dreams, for lack of a better term for it, it hadn’t even taken five minutes before Sam had been pinned to the bed and showed exactly what Dean had learned during his time in Hell. He’d screamed things at him, too, and Sam had been grateful he couldn’t remember what any of those words meant. They were gibberish to him. Just noise. And it was so much better that way. It didn’t hurt.

Sam had no idea what was going on and that made it even more terrifying. Was that the point of this, maybe? To taunt him with what he could no longer have? He had no idea how it was that these torture dreams were brought up. Was it just the Cage forcing his mind to come up with his greatest fears, or just anything horrible? He had no clue how it was picked. Maybe since he was stronger this time, since he _knew_ it was a dream, other things were changing as well. What if it was just waiting for him to get complacent? If he let himself relax, let him get _comfortable_ here, it would be so much worse once the pain kicked in.

Bowing his head, Sam rested his forehead against his knees. He didn’t want to be here. He just wanted Lucifer to show up and pull him out like he always did. He wanted to wrap his soul up in their grace in the only place he felt safe and listen to their music chasing away the sound of the screams.

This…this was painful. This was too close to what Sam thought reality had been life. Life before the Cage was getting blurrier and blurrier. It was hard to remember things. But this, this strange place with the not-wings and the bright light in the windows that wasn’t the light of grace, it seemed…familiar? Something that his brain tried to tell him belonged to _Before_. Even _he_ was different. It was like he, like he had his body back again. It’d been taken from him, he knew. Lucifer had told him. Someone…someone had tried to save him… Castiel? He’d come for Sam and tried to take him but he hadn’t been able to get his soul through, only his body, and the pain of trying to get his soul free had left Sam in agony that had almost destroyed him.

A weird feeling trembled in Sam’s body and he looked down at it with stunned surprise when it made a sound at him. What… what the hell was that? He pressed his hands over his stomach and felt it move again as it grumbled at him. What was this thing? Had they, was there something _inside_ him? Was that what they were doing? Was there something inside him trying to claw its way free? Sam knew what it felt like to have someone go for his stomach, shredding him from the outside in, but he’d never been torn apart from the inside out.

“Jesus.” Dean sounded annoyed or confused or something, Sam wasn’t sure. He wished he understood what Dean was saying as his brother – _Not Dean, this isn’t Dean, this isn’t_ real _!_ – stared down at him and spoke into the little black thing he held to his head. “Bobby, he’s freaking out over his stomach growling. Seriously, it’s like the kid doesn’t even know what’s going on around him. He’s got no idea about _anything_. It’s like he’s not… no. No, I know, I’m not… Fine!”

Dean growled and Sam flinched back when he sent the black thing flying onto the other soft not-wings. A whimper slipped free and he pressed back against the hard thing behind him until it made his back ache. The pain felt good – it felt familiar. This, at least, he knew. He didn’t understand the rest of this!

His whimper caught Dean’s attention. Immediately the man froze. Then he sighed. “It’s fine, Sammy.” He said, “I’m not gonna hurt you. Shit. You don’t even understand me, do you?”

That was a question. Sam knew that. He could hear the change in tone that told him it was a question. “No.” He said shakily. The only answer he could give.

It didn’t make Dean happy – it never made them happy when he said it. “Yeah. I don’t know what this is here, Sammy. We weren’t even hunting anything right now. This isn’t demons, there was no sulfur. I haven’t found any hex bags around here. I’ve got no damn idea what caused this. I don’t even know if you’re still _you_.”

Sam didn’t really care about trying to figure out what it was that Dean was talking about. His stomach was making that strange sound again and he didn’t know what it was or what was happening.

Sighing, Dean turned away from him and strode to the other side of this place. He stopped and ran a hand over his face. Then he mumbled something low, some gibberish, before he looked up at the ceiling and spoke again. Man, he sure seemed to like to talk a lot. More even than the usual things that showed in these torture-dreams. At least it wasn’t always the cold, sickening fury. Though it did sound a little angry when it shouted “Cas, something’s up with my brother. If you could please get your feathery backside down here and see if you can figure it out, cause the hell if I know what’s going on with him, that’d be great.”

It wasn’t until Sam felt a sense of grace coming that he started to actually pay attention. _Lucifer!_ his mind screamed happily. Straightening up on the floor, he looked up, the name falling easily from his lips. But then it got closer and Sam knew that, no, this wasn’t Lucifer, this wasn’t him. This was someone else. Someone else was here. He was already starting to scramble away when that something else landed here. Sam had no idea who it was but he knew that this wasn’t some random hallucination. This wasn’t some strange part of the torture-dream. He knew grace, knew the feel of it better than he knew anything else in this hellish world, and this was grace. This was _real_.

He dove to get across the soft not-wing and as far away from this grace as he possibly could. “ _Lucifer!_ ” He screamed, the word ripping from him. Whoever this angel was, he wasn’t supposed to be here. He shouldn’t be here! Angels – angels were _pain_. They flung words at him like poison, words he knew, words he couldn’t forget. _Abomination, monster, freak._ Those were as much a part of Sam as his name. And they liked to hurt him. The only angels he could trust were Lucifer and Michael. He didn’t know this angel, couldn’t trust it, couldn’t stay here.

His jump seemed to have surprised them. His scream surprised them even more so.

“Sam!” Dean shouted at him. He tried to lunge after him as well, only Sam hurried and rushed and tripped as far away from them as he could.

The angel, this strange angel with the bright eyes and the big, dark wings, pushed towards him, those wings lifting up, and Sam’s terror grew. The grace got closer and suddenly Sam knew, he could _feel_ , just who this was. Castiel. This was _Castiel._ Memories of the last time he was there ripped through Sam and he pulled back even further. No, he couldn’t do it again! He couldn’t! Last time it’d almost _destroyed_ him! If they did it again there’d be nothing left. “No!” he screamed at them, shoving himself against the wall. “No! _No_!”

Dean was shouting and Castiel was coming towards him and Sam could feel his heart pounding, his body shaking, as his fear went higher and higher and higher. He needed to get out of here. He needed to go, to get out of here, to go _back_ before Castiel tried prying him out of the Cage again and there was nothing left in him, nothing left for Michael and Lucifer to put back together. He’d shatter this time, he knew it, and there’d just be nothing. He needed to go!

Between one breath and the next, the world around him shifted and suddenly, Sam got his wish – he was gone. The weird place around him vanished and he found himself standing somewhere with no walls, someone open and green and _beautiful_ , with no idea whatsoever how the hell he’d gotten here.

He stared around him with wide eyes. Where was he? What happened? One moment he’d been beyond terrified, begging and pleading to get out of there, for Lucifer to get him out of there, and the next second he was _here_ – wherever ‘here’ was. Had Lucifer brought him here? Was this… what was this? Sam backed up until his back rammed into something hard and scratchy. _A tree,_ part of his mind whispered to him. _That’s a tree. And this… this is a, forest?_ The words felt strange. Foreign. Like something he almost knew but couldn’t quite grasp the meaning of.

Sam’s heart was pounding in his chest and his hands clenched down tight in the scratchy stuff on this _tree_.

The silence around him was broken by the sudden sound of a voice. “Well – this definitely wasn’t what I was expecting.”

Panic clawed at Sam and he spun so fast he toppled down to the ground. Immediately he scurried back, away from the direction of the voice, even as his eyes sought it out. What he found was someone he immediately recognized. It was someone else who had been a prominent player in his torture-dreams.

_Gabriel_.

The trickster-slash-archangel stood a few feet away with his hands on his hips and a bemused look on his face. There was a dangerous light to his eyes, one that Sam had learned meant serious trouble for him. The last torture-dream he’d had with that light, the trickster had pinned him to the ground in Elysian Fields, right where Gabriel’s body had lain, the ashes of his wings still burnt into the ground on either side of him. Then he’d showed Sam what it felt like, over and over, to have an archangel blade cutting into your flesh. Stabbing through him, ripping him apart, peeling away his skin like the outer layer of an orange.

“Sam Winchester. Gotta say, you’re the last person I’d expected to see here.” Gabriel moved towards him and Sam flew back, cutting his hand open on something on the ground. He didn’t stop to check it, just kept moving, kept trying to get away even if he knew it was futile.

Strangely, though, it seemed to stop the trickster. He froze and his eyebrows shot up. “Woah. Calm down there, kiddo. Your heart beats any harder and it’s gonna pound right out of your chest. Hard as it may be to believe, I’m not here to hurt you. More, curious as to how the hell you got _here_. No one should be able to get here. This is my own personal place. People don’t even know it _exists_. So how’d you end here, huh?”

Not answering Gabriel was worse than not answering Dean. Gabriel always fought to get him to say ‘Yes’. He liked to remind Sam that if he’d said Yes back when he first tried to get them to, back in TV Land, then Gabriel would never have died in that crappy hotel. Sam knew that saying no would only get him more pain, but it was better than the pain that came from not answering at all. “No.”

The look that Gabriel gave him seemed sort of confused. “No? I really wasn’t asking a yes or no question there, kiddo.”

He waited, but Sam just stared at him, not sure what he wanted. Tremors ran down him and he wanted to curl up on the ground. He could feel his hands were wet and wondered absently if it was blood. It felt warm enough to be.

Now something passed over Gabriel’s face that Sam couldn’t name. Holding as still as possible, he watched as Gabriel slowly moved into a crouch. A hint of grace flashed in his eyes and Sam felt the first breath of it, actual grace like he’d felt Castiel’s back in that place. Stunned, Sam knew his eyes were wide, knew his face showed his shock. _No, it’s not possible…_ this couldn’t actually be Gabriel. He was dead. Sam had seen that outcome played over so many times in taunting memory in the Cage. The archangel had died letting them get free. It was one of Lucifer’s greatest regrets. So how could… how did this being in front of him have grace? Was it the same angel as before, just, hiding? Changed to look like Gabriel?

“What the hell happened to you?” The trickster murmured. He tilted his head in that angel gesture of confusion and just watched Sam’s face.

“No.” Sam whispered.

“Is that all you can say?”

That question didn’t sound angry, but it didn’t sound right, either. Still, Sam’s answer was the same. “No.”

“Huh.” Gabriel settled his arms on his knees and just watched Sam. “I got a feeling there’s a story here. There’s something about you, kiddo. You’ve got some angel-mojo around you. I don’t know what those winged dicks did to you, but it’s something serious. I’m not sure you’re even understanding me right now.” For a moment more the two stared at one another, one curious, the other waiting for the pain he was sure was coming. Then Gabriel shook his head. “Right. Well, sitting here letting you bleed all over the place isn’t gonna do anything. C’mon, Gigantor, let’s get you inside and get you cleaned up. Then I’m thinking I’ll try and find your brother. I’ve got a few questions I hope he can answer.”

Sam only had time to suck in a breath before Gabriel snapped and the world changed again.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now remember, as the summary said this is set right after Dean got out of hell, sometime in season 4, so the Winchesters don’t even know that Gabriel is Gabriel - yet. Also, as of right now, I’m planning to do this story all in Sam’s POV, something I’ve never attempted before. If you guys want differently, if you want chapters or even half chapters from Dean’s POV, or Gabriel’s, let me know please!

This torture-dream was getting crazier and more complex. Sam tried to curl his body in as tight as possible where he’d landed on some strange, really soft not-wing. It was even softer than the one he’d been on before. And it was _huge_. It was so huge it left Sam feeling a little sick. This whole, place – _this room –_ felt too big, too open, when all Sam wanted was to be curled up tight and small and as safe as he could make himself. But he couldn’t do it here. Not in this big space on the huge not-wing, with this Gabriel in front of him that might or might not be the real Gabriel. None of the other Gabriel’s he’d met in his torture-dreams had had powers or grace that Sam could _feel_. They’d had powers, sure, pinning him down and throwing him around. But nothing that he could feel.

This grace didn’t feel like the one before, either. It didn’t feel like Castiel’s. It had only flared out a moment before it was hiding under some other sort of power, this one a deep green that made Sam think of nighttime and forests. If he tried to look too close he swore he could hear some strange sort of chanting and the beat of drums echoing off in the distance.

A whimper slid free and he curled in even more.

Gabriel was watching him the whole time and the look on his face was unreadable. He watched Sam settle, watched him try to wrap up in himself until he was as compacted as his aching body could get. Only when Sam made no move to get away did Gabriel finally break pose. He came forward and, after a second’s hesitation, crouched down in front of Sam. The change in position threw Sam off for a moment. He hadn’t expected Gabriel to get that close. He _really_ hadn’t expected him to get down like that, to put himself lower than Sam. That didn’t seem right. It didn’t seem like something either part of Gabriel do – not the trickster and not the archangel. The _real_ Gabriel wouldn’t kneel before an abomination like him.

“Can I touch you?” Gabriel asked.

Whatever those words meant, they didn’t seem angry. They didn’t even seem annoyed. But Sam wasn’t going to fall for soft questions that might trick him. “No.”

One corner of Gabriel’s mouth quirked up in a half-smile that was startlingly without mockery. “Can you say something other than no for me, kiddo?”

“No.” Sam whispered. This question didn’t sound angry, either, but it was only a matter of time before it got that way.

Only, Gabriel kept surprising him. He didn’t get angry. He just smiled a little more and nodded. “Yeah, I’m starting to get that. That’s fine, though. I can talk enough for both of us. Though, it does make it a bit difficult to figure out what’s going on here.” He tilted his head and carefully watched Sam’s face. “Usually, I’d just poke around in that massive cranium of yours but I really don’t feel like messing with whatever angel-mojo is swimming around in there. Not exactly a smart plan. That also means healing is a no-go. So!” A snap of the fingers – Sam couldn’t keep himself from jumping – and a little white box appeared on the floor by Gabriel’s knees. Then the archangel stunned him by reaching out and catching hold of Sam’s wrist.

Though Sam whimpered at the touch, it didn’t hurt. Not even a little. The firm yet gentle touch never turned rough, though when he tried to yank free he couldn’t. It drew his hand down until they could both see the torn and blood skin of his palms. The tree and the ground had done more damage than he realized. Gabriel made a low noise. “Damn, kiddo, you did a number on yourself, didn’t you?”

This whole thing was nothing at all like Sam expected. He was frozen there on the soft thing and could only seem to watch as Gabriel cleaned both his hands, removing dirt and pieces of the tree and some grass from the wounds, and then as he spread some stinging thing on them before wrapping them. He kept up a steady stream of noise the entire time that was surprisingly relaxing. There were a few questions in there, but he didn’t seem to pay any attention to the soft ‘no’ that Sam would give in response. He just kept working until Sam was bandaged up. Then he smiled and straightened back up. “There!” Dusting off his hands, he snapped again and all the stuff was gone. The blood was gone from his hands, too. “You’re about as cleaned up as I’m gonna get you. There’s my good deed for the century. Now, why don’t we get you back to that cranky brother of yours before he does something stupid to try and find you, hm? Maybe he can tell me what’s turned you into the silent wonder.” Pausing, Gabriel shook his head. “Not that I’m even sure why I care. Really, I should just drop you off and go. I’m not in the mood to deal with the winged wonders that follow you two chuckleheads around. But, I always have been too curious for my own good.”

This weird, disorienting travel was almost becoming normal. A snap carried Sam and Gabriel out of the place they’d been and back to the room where Sam had started this all. Castiel was no long there, thankfully, but Dean was. He was talking in that little black thing again and pacing around with an angry look on his face that had Sam immediately trying to draw back. He didn’t even really care about what it was he’d landed on. He just knew he needed to get away from that angry face. Especially when he spun around and stared at them and then shouted something. The next second there was something in his hands – _a gun, that’s a gun! –_ and Sam would’ve bolted again if it wasn’t for the fact that the gun wasn’t pointed at him. It was pointed at Gabriel.

“Trickster.” Dean snarled out. “I should’ve known you had something to do with all this.” His eyes darted to Sam and then back over to Gabriel. “Sammy! Get away from him!”

Sam stayed where he was, frozen, unsure as to what was going on. Beside him, standing between the two not-wings, one of which Sam was sitting on, Gabriel didn’t seem bothered. He chuckled at Dean and shook his head. “Such a warm welcome, Winchester. I’m starting to think you might not like me.”

“Gee, what was your first freaking clue? Now, I don’t know what the hell you did to my brother, but you get your ass away from him _right now_ or I start shooting.”

“You think I did this?” Gabriel raised an eyebrow and looked down at Sam, who shook as he watched them. Then he turned back to Dean. “Bucko, until your bro showed up outside my house a bit ago, I hadn’t seen him since Mystery Spot. If his crazy were cause of me, would I have bandaged up his hands and brought him back here to you?” He reached out like he was going to touch Sam and the next thing Sam knew the sound of the gun going off filled the room, though Sam’s scream was louder. He was so sure that the bullet was going to hit him – right up until he saw that Gabriel hadn’t even flinched.

“I told you.” Dean growled. “Back off. And don’t fucking touch him.”

Sam stared with wide eyes at where Gabriel’s jacket bore the signs of his gunshot. Dean…Dean had shot him. But that didn’t make any sense. No one else ever got hurt except for him! _No one_! Why had Dean shot _Gabriel_ , then?

Unless … unless Gabriel was here. Sam had felt grace from him earlier – grace and power. He’d felt the actual Gabriel hidden under the pagan persona. That meant that he was real. And if Dean was shooting him and Gabriel was actually real, that meant… oh, God. That meant he was here with them. This was the _actual_ Gabriel, not just another part of the torture-dream. Which meant that somehow, maybe when he died, Gabriel had ended up in the Cage right along with them. Sam’s eyes went wide with horror and he didn’t realize how he was hyperventilating, on the edge of a panic attack. All he knew was that _Gabriel was here_ and no, no, that couldn’t be right, he couldn’t be here, hurting with Sam.

He must be in the Cage and had found Sam in a torture-dream and tried to pull him out. But, only Lucifer could do that. Only he could pull Sam out of these things. Afterwards, he and Michael would hold him, make him better, but only Lucifer could pull him out because they were connected. Had Gabriel somehow found them in here and tried to pull him out and got _stuck_?

Sam threw caution to the wind and pushed himself up off the not-wing. He hadn’t wanted near Gabriel before when he thought he was part of all this. Now that he knew he was here, he was _real_ , everything in him wanted to cling to the archangel. Power meant safety here and Sam had been reduced to those base instincts a long, long time ago. He had no issue reaching out and grabbing hold of Gabriel’s jacket and pulling himself up to look at the shoulder wound. Who knew if these things could seriously hurt an archangel?

His actions seemed to surprise everyone. Dean made another angry sound, but Gabriel just turned to look at him and his face was kind of… soft. Soft like Michael could get. Soft like Lucifer when Sam was hurt and upset and broken. “Hey.” He brought a hand up and curled it around Sam, hesitating for a second before bringing it up to touch his hair, cupping the back of his head. Sam didn’t pull away. This close, he could feel the grace even more, feel it responding to the grace in him. “I’m all right, kiddo. Bullets don’t bother me.”

“Get your grubby paws off him.” Dean snarled out.

The anger made Sam press in closer. _Safety_.

Gabriel arched an eyebrow and then turned towards Dean. He never let go of Sam, though. “I’m not the one playing grabby hands here, Deanie boy. Notice who is latched on to who here.”

“Sam’s not in his right mind right now.”

“Yeah, you can say that again. I admit, got me a little curious. What exactly happened to him? And, y’know, how the hell’d he end up at my place – in _Switzerland_?”

Sam heard the question but this one wasn’t directed at him so he didn’t bother answering. He just leaned in against Gabriel a little more, still kneeling on the soft under him, and he pressed his cheek against Gabriel’s chest. It wasn’t the same as being wrapped up in Lucifer but it was close. Close enough for him to feel less like he was going to scream. He wanted to know how Gabriel had gotten here but he didn’t want to question it at the same time. Maybe with him here Sam would be safe until Lucifer could pull them both out. He’d been so… so nice so far. Fixing up Sam’s hands, keeping him safe, making nice soft noises that weren’t angry. Sam almost wished he could understand the words he was saying. But they were still all noise.

In his cuddling and relaxing he’d missed part of the noise that the two were making. But the sound of Gabriel making some low happy noise, something that made his chest vibrate, had Sam looking up again. He found that Dean’s gun was gone and the two were still facing off, but Dean looked less ready to fight. Gabriel stroked a hand over Sam’s hair and there was a smirk on his lips. “Let’s just say I don’t like it when people break my toys, hm?” Gabriel said. “Now, tell me what happened. Maybe it’ll make this make sense.”

“Can you at least stop hugging him like he’s some rag doll?”

Gabriel tried to move away and Sam couldn’t keep from whimpering. His bandaged hands curled tightly into the archangel’s jacket and he pressed himself closer. Again, he felt that rumble of happy noise in Gabriel’s chest and he stopped trying to pull away from Sam. “Don’t think that’s gonna happen. Someone apparently decided to latch on.”

“Freaking great.” Dean’s glare moved down to Sam, who immediately pressed himself in as close as he possibly could to Gabriel. “This thing you’ve got for trusting monsters is starting to get old, fast, Sam.”

The arm around Sam pulled him in a little closer, making some of his bruises ache, but Sam was grateful for it. He could ignore little pain. Especially if it meant that he was going to get even closer to the only thing he thought might be safe here. “Watch it.” Gabriel’s voice was a growl that made his chest vibrate a little, and not in the happy way it had before. “He doesn’t seem to understand English but he sure seems to get tone.”

Whatever noise Gabriel was making had Dean backing down a little. He looked less angry, though he did sigh and glare a little at Gabriel. “I don’t need you lecturing me on how to take care of my brother.”

“Then pull your head out of your ass and stop being a dick.” Gabriel said with a happy sound to his voice.

They went back to their noise-making again and Sam found himself relaxing a little against Gabriel’s chest. This whole thing, it’d been beyond confusing and he just, he didn’t know what to do or what to think. Everything felt so damn strange. It felt _wrong_. This was nothing like the torture-dreams that he was used to. And how was Gabriel here? _Why_? Why would he be in the Cage? And if he was – why hadn’t they noticed him before? There were so many questions and they just made Sam’s head hurt. He didn’t want to think about them. He didn’t want to think at all. He just wanted out of this and back with the two archangels who had once hated him, and who now cared for him more than anyone or anything he’d ever come across except for Dean.

Sam sighed and found his eyes drifting closed. He didn’t think about it – sleep wasn’t something that happened in here. But it felt so good to just close his eyes a bit and let his cheek rest against Gabriel’s chest, the vibrations when he spoke a soothing sensation. All of those stupid questions could wait. Why bother asking them? He wouldn’t be able to change anything. He had no power down here. Here, he was weak, nothing. He had no control. That was fine, really. Everyone always said that Sam made bad decisions anyways. Even Michael had said it. Lucifer had ranted at him for it, of course, and he’d refused to speak to Michael for a good five years afterwards. But Sam knew it was true. He made bad decisions. So why should he try to make any more now? Lucifer and Michael weren’t here to make them for him, but Gabriel was, and as much as Gabriel had hurt him in life – memories that were so hazy, tinged with the fog that was falling over the _before_ – and in torture-dreams, he had saved them in the end, and he had been good in a way. Lucifer mourned his death and hated himself for causing it. He would trust Gabriel – so Sam would, too.

There, curled up against one he was sure he could trust, Sam drifted off to sleep.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I decided we needed at least ONE outside perspective. So, here's Gabriel's. I may do one from Dean's later, just to show their thoughts and to give us an outside view. Especially since Sam's view is so skewed right now
> 
> As always, I have no beta, though I'd love one, so all mistakes are my own

Gabriel stared down at the kid sound asleep against him and wondered yet again what the hell he had gotten himself into here. There was something big going on, something that definitely involved his brothers, and that right there should be enough to send him running far, far away. He really shouldn’t be involved in anything even remotely close to his family. He’d been hiding from them for so damn long. Too long to throw it all away for a broken down hunter. Yet… if there were any who might push him that way, it would be this one.

There was a part of him that almost wondered if this was somehow geared to draw him back in. His brothers wouldn’t be smart enough for something like that. If they knew where he was, they’d drag him back whether he liked it or not. However, there was one being strong enough to pull something like this, to set it all up as a way to get Gabriel back home. He closed his eyes and tried not to curse his Father. _If this is all some plan to get me home, you really suck, Dad. Whatever the kid’s done, he doesn’t deserve to be broken apart like this._

Sam had blasted onto his property – property that was warded and shielded to the nines, and yet somehow this patchwork hunter with this strange feel of grace to him that _shouldn’t be there_ had managed to fly himself there in a blast of pure terror running from his brother and Gabriel’s brother. When Gabriel had felt him arrive, had gone out there and found him, he’d planned on demanding some answers, and he was very good at getting answers when he wanted. He hadn’t expected to find Sam shaking and quivering on the ground. He definitely hadn’t expected to see the kid so panicked he’d sliced up his hands in his hurry to get the hell away from Gabriel.

There was angel-mojo all over the kid. That was easy to see with just a look. When he’d been on his knees fixing up Sam’s hands, a sight that would’ve made plenty of people laugh if they’d seen it, he had noticed a little bit more. It wasn’t just _around_ the kid, it was _in_ him. Seraphs like Castiel could only see a soul if they reached down into them and went about it the hard – and painful – way. Archangels, however, could see them all. They just had to look. Especially if said archangel had shoved his own grace down pretty far in an attempt to hide away. When he’d taken the time to dare a peek at Sam’s soul, it hadn’t been what he’d expected. Sam’s soul was broken, scarred, almost shattered in places. It looked like it’d been through the worst kind of torture and was only barely held together. Yet, in those places where it looked like it was truly breaking apart, where it looked like it might’ve actually broken at some point, _grace_ was there.

It was like some patchwork quilt of grace and soul. He couldn’t tell whose grace, it was too intertwined with Sam’s soul now to get a read on it without touching it. It seemed to be slowly merging with Sam’s soul in a way that suggested the two were soon going to become completely one. The boy with the demon blood in him, the one Heaven called the abomination, was now more angel than human. He’d never be completely human again. The patches of grace, they wouldn’t be able to be removed. Not without killing him.

All of that only made Gabriel wonder more. What the everlasting hell had happened to do that kind of damage to the kid’s soul? That wasn’t something that could be done quickly or easily. Not in the short time since he’d last seen them. And even if Sam hadn’t seen him, he’d seen Sam plenty while Dean was in Hell. Not so much since Dean had been brought back and was followed pretty often by his Heavenly stalker. This kind of damage couldn’t have happened during that time. Not even if Sam had been in Hell – which Gabriel knew hadn’t happened. That kind of news would’ve been all over every wire out there.

His curiosity and this idiotic little thing – _it wasn’t an obsession, definitely not, he wasn’t obsessed –_ with Sam Winchester made it impossible for Gabriel to just walk away; which was why he was stupidly here in the Winchester crap motel room of the week actually talking with Dean and trying not to roll his eyes at the idiot’s posturing. The Winchesters only knew him as the Trickster and it was sort of understandable that Dean wouldn’t trust him. Hadn’t made it any less of a pain in the ass to convince him to let Gabriel help out.

Then again, Sam himself had made that a whole lot easier. He’d done a complete one-eighty as soon as Dean had shot the archangel. Something about that had set him off and Sam had ended up plastered up against him. He wasn’t flinching away from him anymore. In fact, he was _sleeping_.

Gabriel denied the tug at his grace that he got at the sight of Sam’s face, soft and sweet in sleep.

He couldn’t deny his desire to help, though, even if the cost was looking frighteningly high. More and more it looked like Gabriel was going to have to actually try and step into the kid’s head to figure out what was going on here. Only, that wasn’t going to be easy. The grace in him was working like a great wall that kept his mind sheltered. Sam probably didn’t even realize it. It was definitely protecting him, though. If Gabriel wasn’t an archangel he most likely would’ve been fooled into believing that Sam was still just Sam Winchester. But he knew better. He could see it. And he wasn’t eager to reveal himself to these two bozos just to figure out why little Sammy Winchester’s soul looked the way it did. If he went in there, there was no doubt the grace in Sam would react to his grace. Besides, there was no telling what other kind of angel mojo was around the kid, or what had been put in there with the grace. Gabriel wasn’t going to blindly fall into what could easily be a trap.

He didn’t realize how long he’d been standing there staring when Dean’s voice broke through his thoughts. A stupid thing, getting caught up like that around a hunter – one who had been known to try and kill him.

“Can you help him?”

It was easy to see just how hard that was for Dean to ask. He was standing here trying to trust a pagan god, a trickster, to help his brother, and oh it had to eat at him. Gabriel could respect the sacrifice in pride that it took. Even if it was the very thing that had gotten these idiots into trouble in the past it was hard not to admire just how much they cared for one another. That kind of devotion wasn’t something you found just anywhere. Certainly his own family didn’t show it.

Gabriel didn’t answer right away. It was the very question he’d been standing here asking himself and he still hadn’t figured out his answer. Could he help the kid? More to the matter, did he want to take the risk of _trying_ to help him?

More for the sake of keeping up his image here than anything else, Gabriel let the smirk of the trickster settle onto his features and he arched an eyebrow at the older hunter. “What’s in it for me if I do?”

He could practically see Dean grinding his teeth. It was rather satisfying; pissing off hunters, and this one in particular, was something he took great pleasure in. They made it too easy for him.

“How bout I don’t kill you?” Dean growled at him.

A chuckle shook Gabriel slightly and he felt Sam shift just a bit closer like he was drawn in by that happy sound. Stroking his fingers lightly through the moose’s long locks, he kept his amused gaze on Dean. “An how’d that work out for you the last few tries, eh Deano?”

“Screw this!” Dean snapped. “I’m not making some damn deal with you. I’ll call Cas and we’ll get Sam to chill for him to look at him. No way I’m gonna put up with _your_ crap. Put my brother down and get the hell out. Now!”

That was actually a pretty impressive growl there at the end. Hell had definitely changed Dean. He was rougher, angrier – more dangerous. But he had a long way to go before he’d even scratch the surface of what would scare Gabriel. Little growls and the gun in his hand weren’t going to do it. Calling in his angel, however, was hitting pretty close. “Calm your britches there, Rambo.” Rolling his eyes, Gabriel tried to remind himself that not only was Dean a volatile hunter to begin with, with little patience, he was fresh out of Hell and bound to be a bit more screwy than normal. It was to be expected and he could have a little bit of understanding over it. A very little bit. “I told you before, I don’t like it when people break my toys. I’ll see what I can do for Sammy boy here. There’s just one condition.”

“I’ve already been that route, thanks. I’m not keen to do it again.” Dean shot back immediately.

Gabriel wrinkled his nose at him. “Ew, no. Trust me, bucko, I don’t want your soul. That’s not my thing. No, what I want is much, much simpler. I want your word you won’t mention me to your little angel buddies. And keep in mind – when making a deal with a pagan, your word is as binding as any deal you make with a demon. Just, minus the kissing.”

He wasn’t surprised that Dean looked suspicious. However, he _was_ a bit surprised when Dean spoke and he sounded a bit less angry than before, and a bit more contemplative. “Why?”

“Uh, hello? Trickster?” he swirled a finger in front of his face, just for the enjoyment of seeing how that word and gesture irritated him. Then he rolled his eyes. “Use your brain, buddy. Angels aren’t exactly all that fond of my kind. I’d rather _not_ have to worry about trying to hide my ass from them. So, we got a deal? I look at your baby brother here and you swear not to mention me and my help to the God Squad you’ve got stalking you.”

There was a long moment of quiet in which he could see Dean was actually thinking about his response. It was a nice change from the usual jump-first-look-later sort of mentality that the Winchesters tended to employ. Finally, though, the kid nodded. “Deal. You’ve got my word.”

A little thrum of power settled over the two of them as the pagan power Gabriel had acquired took the deal and sealed it. He saw Dean startle and knew that the hunter had felt it too.

He didn’t seem to be the only one. Whether it was the thrum of power in the air that Sam was reacting to, or the rumble of their voices, when Gabriel looked down he found that the hunter was awake once more and was looking up at him with those wide, wounded puppy eyes. As Gabriel held that gaze, he knew that the question of him helping hadn’t ever really been a question at all. This hunter tugged at him too much in too many different ways.

For a moment the two of them just stared at one another. There was something in Sam’s eyes, fear and resignation, all mixed in with what Gabriel was stunned to realize was _trust._

All of those things tugged at the different pieces of Gabriel. It tugged at the pagan in him as well as the archangel. He wanted to take Sam away, broken, delicious thing that he was, and keep him, and he wanted to wrap him up and convince him it was all going to be okay. “Only you.” He murmured, carding his fingers through Sam’s hair.

All right. If they were going to do this, he might as well get it done. Using the hand in Sam’s hair to hold him close, Gabriel looked up at the older Winchester. “Brace yourself, tough guy.” That was all the warning he gave. Even as he saw Dean open his mouth to start to yell, the trickster lifted his fingers and snapped.

It was amusing as hell to watch Dean stumble when they landed in Gabriel’s bedroom back in the same safe house where he’d fixed up Sam’s hands. He’d made sure to fly him and Sam right to the bed so the hunter wouldn’t even half to shift position. Sam seemed content where he was and Gabriel didn’t want to disturb him. Especially with what he was about to do. But he dumped Dean right in the middle of the room and let the guy stumble a little before he got his feet. It was worth it to see the glare that it earned him.

“What the hell?” Dean shouted furiously. Against Gabriel’s chest, Sam flinched at the sound but the hunter ignored him. “Dude! You don’t just snap people away without their permission!”

Gabriel didn’t flinch at all from Dean’s yelling. “Did you seriously think I’d just stay there and do this where any old angel could walk in? We’re in my place now, Deano. There’s no better wards to be found anywhere.” Here, he didn’t have to worry about anyone showing up, or potentially feeling what he was about to do. They were all as safe as he could make them here.

Without another care for Dean or his attitude or temper, the archangel turned himself to look down at Sam once more. He smiled at the kid in the hopes of reassuring him and he pet his hand through his hair. That small, kind touch was enough to have Sam’s patchwork soul lighting up a little and the boy sighing happily. “All right, kiddo.” Gabriel said lowly, his hand curling around so that his thumb could stroke over the apple of Sam’s cheek. “I know you can’t really understand me right now, but like before, I’m gonna talk anyways. I’m hoping there’s a part of you in there that _does_ understand me.” Hopefully. Because doing this without permission was just too much, even for Gabriel. And he’d done some pretty awful things in his time as a pagan.

‘“I’m gonna try and take a look inside, Samsquatch. It won’t hurt, I promise, but it might feel just a bit weird.” He turned himself just enough that he could catch Sam’s head with his other hand. Then, cradling the hunter’s head between his palms, he discreetly pressed the tip of each middle finger against Sam’s temples. The gesture probably looked the same as many angelic ones – they always finger tapped a head to do things – and he hoped Dean wouldn’t recognize that. Then he pushed that thought aside and focused. This was going to take precision and care. “All right. Look at me, kiddo, and hang on.”

With a deep breath, Gabriel dove inside.

* * *

It took everything Gabriel had to keep his grace contained and to keep his human vessel from throwing up when he pulled himself back from Sam. Shock and horror were the two predominate emotions he was feeling, followed almost immediately by sorrow as well as the strong need to manifest wings he’d kept hidden for centuries and wrap them around this hunter so that no one could ever hurt him again. Just barely did he resist that urge. He couldn’t, however, stop himself from pulling Sam in towards his chest and cradling the hunter there, holding him as close as he physically could. Sam didn’t protest. He burrowed in against Gabriel and made little sounds in his throat, low sounds that spoke of happiness and security in what Gabriel now knew was most likely the poor man’s only form of communication aside from his quiet ‘No’.

For a few long moments they just stayed there against one another and Gabriel ignored the sounds of the other hunter in the room. He couldn’t speak to him, not yet. Not until he got himself under control. His own grace was throbbing and he could feel temper stirring underneath. Temper that could prove deadly if he let it out. How dare they do this to him? How dare someone damage this soul, _any_ soul, this way!

It was when Sam started to shudder against him that Gabriel really paid attention to the sounds around him. The poor young man shook hard when Dean shouted “Dammit, Trickster! What the hell did you do to him? What’s going on?”

“Be quiet!” Gabriel snapped. His voice was low and hard and sharp as a whip. It was enough to silence Dean and still Sam. Immediately Gabriel rubbed a hand soothingly over Sam’s back. He hadn’t wanted to startle him more. Forcibly, he calmed himself, lowering his voice so that it wouldn’t carry the sounds of anger that so obviously scared Sam. “Be quiet.” He repeated, smoother this time, easier. “Your brother may not understand our words but he does seem to understand our sounds. Anger terrifies him. Keep your voice calm.”

“What do you mean he doesn’t understand our words?”

Gabriel kept stroking his hand over Sam’s back and he felt as the hunter started to relax against him once more. “It’s hard to tell in there. His head… I don’t dare touch it. But what I picked up I’d guess that he understands that you’re talking, he just doesn’t have a damn clue what it is you’re saying.” _Noise_ , he’d felt when he was in there. It’d been an errant thought, slipping through all the chaos, but it’s the impression he got when Sam heard voices. Just indecipherable noise. “I mean, I’m sure a part of him probably does, but the translator in his brain is kind of broken right now, so he’s not really getting anything but noise from us. I think.”

He heard Dean move a little closer and felt Sam tense in response. He had to give Dean credit, though. Despite how angry Gabriel could feel he was, he was keeping his voice as even as possible. “What’s wrong with his head?”

That was a loaded question. Gabriel looked down at the top of Sam’s shaggy head and tried to think of how to put it into words. How to make sense of all that chaos. Especially without setting himself off even more. His back twitched a little as he fought the urge to let his wings out. “It’s chaos.” He said simply. Before Dean could demand more, Gabriel continued. “I tried to step in there. It’s so mixed up and jumbled it’s a wonder the kid is even upright. If I go in there – the human mind isn’t made for intrusion. Not like the kind I’d need to do. At worst, it could shred what’s left of his already fragile sanity. At best, I could keep it under control, but it’d be another violation put on a soul that’s had too much already.” Far, far too much.

He heard Dean suck in a sharp breath. “What happened to him?”

This was where it got tricky. “Sam’s not…he’s not the Sam you knew, kiddo. Oh, not like that!” He snapped that last part as he felt Dean tense. Shaking his head again, Gabriel rolled his eyes. Then he grew serious again. All the little things he’d found in there, tiny little bits of information, were all piecing together to make a picture that almost broke him. He was terrified he knew what had happened here and what had caused this. Getting that up close look at Sam’s soul, at the soul and _grace_ in there, was the biggest clue of all. Especially once he’d sensed just who that grace belonged to. He had no idea how Dean was going to take it, though. “He’s still Sam. I think he’s just…a future Sam. One from your future. A future I don’t even want to think about. His soul – it’s old, bucko. I’m talking, _millennia_ old.”

“Humans don’t live that long!” Dean said, forgetting to keep calm.

Gabriel turned towards him and arched an eyebrow. “You don’t have to be alive to age your soul. _Your_ soul’s a good forty years older than your body.”

He watched as the realization of what he meant hit Dean and sent him reeling. His mouth dropped open and his eyes went wide. “Are you saying my brother was in Hell?” He didn’t give Gabriel time to answer. “There’s no reason Sam would go to hell! Not now and not in the future. You’ve gotta be wrong.”

Gabriel wished he could tell him otherwise. In that moment, the trickster was pushed aside the archangel he was hated this, hated it so damn much, and hated the pain his message was causing. “Sorry, Deano.” And he really was. Especially for what he was about to say. “I’m almost positive. In fact, if I read him right through all that mess, he thinks he’s still there. Not just in Hell, but in the Cage – with Michael and Lucifer.”


	5. Chapter 5

Sam kept waiting for things to take a turn for the worse. This whole situation was just strange and nothing at all like he’d become used to. He didn’t really understand how to deal with it. It was nice, he wouldn’t deny that. Sitting curled up against Gabriel’s chest had been absolutely wonderful. Sam had felt _safe_ and that wasn’t something that these torture-dreams gave him. But that was just it - this wasn’t something he was used to. These things followed a pattern and relief was nowhere in the mix. Not until Lucifer pulled him out. Having Gabriel here, having him treat Sam like he was good and special and someone to keep safe, having Dean not hurting him, all of it was throwing Sam and he just didn’t know what to do.

It didn’t help that Dean was talking in a much gentler voice now. Sam appreciated the noise not sounding so angry. He just... didn’t trust it. It had to be a trick of some kind. Either that, or he was just afraid of Gabriel. Maybe Gabriel had threatened him and that was why Dean was keeping quiet. But that just meant that as soon as Gabriel wasn’t around, the masks could come off and Dean could be like the one Sam had gotten used to. He wasn’t sure which option he wanted more. To stay around Gabriel and keep safe or to get away from him so that Dean could act the way Sam knew he was supposed to. There was a part of Sam’s brain that still whispered sometimes that he deserved this. This was his punishment for everything he’d done wrong and all the people who had died because of his mistakes.

Lucifer hated when Sam thought like that. Michael, too, really. Neither one of them were fond of Sam’s self-hatred and they tried to convince him that this wasn’t his fault. Sam knew better, though. He remembered Michael’s words during the early days of their imprisonment back before the two archangels had worked out their troubles. He remembered Michael’s rage and how much of it had been turned his way. Michael might know better now, he might care deeply for Sam and protect him just as much as Lucifer, but that didn’t mean Sam would forget those early words. They rang too true for him and too close to what he had already felt.

However, it didn’t seem like Gabriel could hear Sam’s thoughts so there was no finding out how he felt about what Sam thought of himself.

For a moment earlier he’d been sure the trickster archangel could hear his thoughts. When he’d touched Sam’s head and let a bit of his power into Sam it had felt like they might be able to touch. Then Gabriel had pulled back and he’d looked so shocked and so sad it had made Sam’s heart and his grace want to weep. All he’d been able to do was curl up against his chest and hold on as Gabriel and Dean talked.

For now, Sam was going to continue to stick with Gabriel. The archangel seemed to feel the same as the others. He seemed to want to protect Sam and Sam had become so used to that sensation from Lucifer and Michael it just felt natural. He could ignore Dean’s annoyed looks for now. Having this hallucination-dream version of his brother glare at him was nothing. His actual brother had glared at him all the time and Sam had long since grown immune. And the version of Dean he saw in these dreams had done things much worse than glaring. It wasn’t hard for Sam to ignore it.

“That’s impossible.” Dean was saying. He was trying really hard to keep his voice even but Sam could hear the strain under it.

Still beside Sam, holding him, Gabriel shook his head. “Actually, it’s not. Time travel isn’t all that hard for angels. If somehow they took his soul and threw it back in time, he could’ve merged with the Sammy of your time. It’d explain a lot of things. Why he’s got angel mojo around him, why I can feel grace in him, why he’s so messed up. I can’t imagine those two were _gentle_ with him.”

“Why the hell would they send him _back_?”

“Maybe Michael did.” Gabriel sounded different now. Not bad, just different. He shuddered a little and pulled Sam closer. “I don’t know why Michael’s in there and I don’t think I want to know. But maybe it was the only way he could save Sam.”

“I don’t get why he’d be in there in the first place!”

Gabriel didn’t say anything to that. He rocked Sam slightly, rubbing at his back, and Sam absorbed the touch. Dean sounded a bit angry again and Sam was unsure by it. It made him want to hide, or shake, or something. Instead, he forced himself to focus on the hand that was now sliding up his back, over his arm, and then down to curl over his hand. Gabriel used that hold and stepped back, drawing Sam up with him in one smooth move. Then, still holding his hand, he continued to pull Sam forward, slowly taking him out of the room. Sam pressed himself a little close to the being leading him along through this weird place. _A house,_ his brain told him. _This is a hous_ e.

“What’re you doing?” Dean asked as he followed after them.

Sam wasn’t sure whether or not the question was directed at him. Safer just to answer it, he figured. “No.”

The way Gabriel looked back at him was kind of sad. He smiled, however, and pulled Sam a little closer to him. Then he drew him into this big open space with all sorts of colors and shining metal. Sam’s eyes widened as he looked at the metal and he felt his heart start to thud inside of his chest. _No, no_. His breathing grew choppy and he could hear it start to make that strange whistling sound that told him he was panicking too much. No, no, they’d been so…so nice! They couldn’t mean to do _that_. They couldn’t! Yet he was staring right at the big metal box and he knew what things like that could hold. He knew the kind of stuff that could be inside and he knew what it was like to be stuffed inside of some of them. To lay on that hard table and get pushed inside the giant metal box. Or the ones that opened and showed tool after tool after tool that would be used to rip and shred and break him apart.

Dean was making some strange noise again and he tried to come forward, tried to come towards Sam, only to stop when the whine that Sam had been fighting finally broke free.

Then suddenly a hand was gripping the back of his neck and Sam found his head yanked down until he was eye to eye with Gabriel. He held Sam there and didn’t let him move away. Whatever he said, the noise he made wasn’t angry. It didn’t hold the promise of pain. Low and firm, it steadied Sam, breaking through his panic. “Breathe, Sam.” Gabriel said in that firm voice of his. Sam wished briefly he could understand the words. The tone was nice, though. “Just breathe. You’re safe, do you hear me? You’re safe.”

“I thought you said he doesn’t understand words.” Dean said from somewhere off to the side.

Gabriel didn’t look away from Sam. “I’m not sure a part of him somewhere deep inside doesn’t. Either way, he understands tone. Don’t you, Sam-a-lam? You recognize the tone and the emotion in it. That grace in there, it probably helps you _feel_ the emotion. It sure helps you project it. I can feel the terror coming off of you. Whatever scared you, it’s not real. Whatever it is you think is going to happen to you or that you think we’re going to do, I promise you, it’s not true. No one’s going to hurt you here.”

A low sound came from Dean that was sort of angry but also kind of…amused? Was that the word? “Yeah, cause it doesn’t sound freaky having _you_ of all things out there talking about not hurting him. Who the hell are you and what have you done with the Trickster douchebag who liked to torture my brother?”

“I didn’t torture him, I tried to teach him.” Gabriel said. He tilted his head, eyes still on Sam’s. “And we made a deal, you and I. One I have to honor now. Terrifying your brother doesn’t exactly help him now does it?”

Their noise slowly became background sound for Sam as his thoughts turned a bit inward. It bothered him to not be able to place the word to the sound that Dean had made. He’d already lost his ability to understand and speak English. Was he starting to lose everything else, too? Was he losing his ability to function at all? He had lost the ability to place words to most objects. Even the colors had taken a second to come to him. Now he was losing the ability to put words to _emotions_ and naming the emotions had been something that had helped him a time or two down here. Was he just going to keep losing things? Would it keep going until there was nothing left?

Strangely, that thought didn’t terrify him as it once might’ve.

Sam felt the hand on his neck give a little squeeze and then he was being led over and pushed to sit down on something. He didn’t let go of the hold he had on Gabriel’s hand and, wonderfully, the archangel didn’t try and make him.

When Sam looked up a second later his heart jumped when he saw that Dean stood by the open silver box. Gabriel’s thumb ran over his wrist, right over his pulse, as if to soothe that spike in his heart rate. Sam was already calming, though. There were no strange torture things inside that box. No long empty space to stuff Sam inside of. There was…food. Dean was pulling out what Sam recognized as food and he was, he was _cooking_.

Sam’s stomach made a strange sound again and twisted on itself almost painfully. He jumped, eyes wide.

Beside him, Gabriel chuckled, a musical happy-sound. Again, his thumb stroked over Sam’s wrist. He was standing right by this hard thing that Sam was sitting on and he moved up now to stand directly between Sam’s legs. It turned him so the weird counter they were at was right by Sam’s side. “Calm down, kiddo.” Gabriel told him, lips quirked up in a smile that made Sam want to smile back. “You’re just hungry. Big bro over there is gonna make you something to eat and then I’m thinking we’ll get you to lay down a bit. Sound good? Food and a nap? You’ve had a helluva day.”

“If we can get him to let go of you.” Dean tossed out. He had moved over to the counter with his armful of food and Sam felt his eyes go wide. That was… that was a lot of food.

Gabriel turned his head to look at Dean and Sam couldn’t see his face but he could hear his voice and the happy sound of it as he said “Jealous?” He turned back to Sam and grinned. Then he brought his free hand up and patted over top of his and Sam’s still joined ones. “Ignore your grumpy brother, kiddo. He just wishes he had someone hanging off him. Besides, I’m awesome to hang out with. Is there anyone out there cooler than me?”

That was definitely a question. One asked with a grin and a happy sound rough over the words, but still a question. Sam answered, low and soft, “No.”

“That’s so cheating!” Dean said. “He doesn’t say anything else.” He stretched over the counter and set down some food on a…plate? Food on a plate in front of Sam. He didn’t seem to notice how Sam leaned away. Didn’t get mad, either.

Making more of those happy sounds, which in turn made Sam’s grace-soul light up, Gabriel pulled the plate a bit closer with the hand that wasn’t holding Sam’s. “Who told you I play fair, bucko?”

All the food on the plate looked so _good._ Sam stared at them and his mouth watered a little. When was the last time he’d eaten anything good? The only things he could remember eating were the things in his torture-dreams that had been used to hurt him more. This…it wasn’t like that, was it? Gabriel wouldn’t let that happen, would he? Sam shot him a worried look, only slightly encouraged by the soft smile that Gabriel wore. The archangel must’ve understood Sam’s silent hesitance because he nudged the plate forward a bit more. Then he looked from the plate, to Sam, back to the plate, then back to Sam again. It made it pretty clear what he wanted.

Sam slowly lifted his hand, watching Gabriel the whole time. He tried not to look at Dean. He just looked at the one here he knew he could trust. Without thinking about it, his hand tightened over Gabriel’s. The archangel didn’t protest. He just held on and nodded encouragingly as Sam’s free hand went up a little more and a little more. When it finally settled on the plate, over the food, Gabriel beamed at him.

Then Dean gave a low, “C’mon, Sammy” and the noise startled the already terrified young man. Immediately he yanked his hand back, so fast he actually jarred the plate and sent it flying down to the ground. Sam saw the stunned faces but he was caught mostly by the shards of broken plate with their edges that he swore shone tauntingly at him. A mistake like this, something this stupid and troublesome, was sure to get him in the trouble he’d managed to avoid thus far, and Sam wasn’t going to stick around for it.

He didn’t know what he did, or how he did it, but the need to get _away_ and to get _safe_ filled him and he was suddenly back at the soft not-wing where Gabriel had fixed his hands. Sam didn’t stay there, though. He landed and immediately dove down to the ground. He didn’t remember a lot about these not-wings but he _did_ remember that they made a perfect hiding spot. It never lasted. Still, for a bit, it was better than nothing. Maybe even good enough to hide him until Gabriel could make sure he’d be safe.

Sam curled himself in tight in the darkness underneath the not-wing and drew his knees up to his chest. He pinned his arms between his knees and his chest and curled his hands tight. Lying on his side, he stared at the thin strips of light that showed him the rest of the room. Here, he had a view to the door. Here, he could watch and wait.

There was no telling how much time passed. Sam laid there for what felt like no time at all and yet also felt like forever. Too long. His whole body was tensed in preparation of what he was so sure was coming. Memories of the past, memories of times he tried and tried and tried to forget, all of those burned in his head. Times he’d hid and been yanked out. Times he’d been made to pay for his hiding. Times the torture-dreams had started out nice until he did something stupid – knock something over, break something, breathe wrong, sass one of the dream people too much – and he’d been punished. What would they do now? What was going to happen?

When he heard footsteps, he had to fight to keep from whimpering. Sam stuffed a fist in his mouth and bit down, _hard_ , to keep from making any sound. He watched with wide eyes as a pair of shoes came into view. They came close to the not-wing and Sam could barely hear anything over the pounding of his heart.

There was a long moment where those shoes didn’t move. Then he heard a voice – _Gabriel’s voice._ “Don’t panic, Sam. I’m coming down there, okay? It’s just me.” Slowly, oh-so-slowly, he saw the shoes shift and then jeans came into view, knees kneeling on the carpet. Hands came next. Then – Sam held his breath – a head. When he saw Gabriel’s face, he made a choked sound of relief against his fist. It put an air of sadness around Gabriel and his face fell only briefly before it was once more back to that soothing look he’d had before. The one that made Sam feel like he _cared_. It was so strange to see and yet so absolutely exactly what he needed.

He was surprised when Gabriel didn’t try to draw him out. Instead, the archangel crawled right underneath the not-wing with him.

Gabriel stopped in front of him and lay down on his side as well. One of his arms he tucked under his head and the other he let lay in front of him, hand laying loose under his cheek. He kept just a bit of space between them that Sam was grateful for. His tension was fading a bit now that Gabriel was here. The shakes were kicking in, though. His hand was trembling when he drew it away from his mouth.

“It’s okay, kiddo.” Gabriel looked right at him while he made those noises Sam knew he should knew. “I sent Dean off to Bobby’s place to go give the old man a head’s up and to give him a chance to blow off some steam. He’s probably not too happy with me right now but we can deal with that tomorrow. You’re pretty much my concern right now. Besides, I don’t even want to hear how much he’d be laughing at us right now. He wouldn’t appreciate an awesome fort like this. Or how safe it probably makes you feel, hm?”

That…Sam was sure that wasn’t a question. He didn’t answer it and Gabriel didn’t seem to mind. In fact, he smiled at him. A big, eye crinkling smile, followed by a wink. “You better feel special, Samba. I wouldn’t hang out down here on the floor for just anyone. The things you do to me.”

There was something off in Gabriel’s voice at the end there and Sam didn’t know how to make it go away. He didn’t have the words, didn’t dare try the only words he knew even though he knew that if there was anyone else who would understand that language, it would be the being before him. Yet Sam was scared to try. Scared to find out just how much he’d lost. And there was a tiny part of him that was still scared this was all some trick, some hallucination, that was going to be taken away. So he kept the words locked inside. Instead, he relied on the only other thing he could do. Gabriel had seemed to understand most of his actions before. Sam hoped he did now. Carefully, gently, he uncurled himself just the slightest bit. Enough to untuck one of his arms from where it’d been squished to his chest. Then, ever so slowly, he slid it out and let it rest of the soft ground underneath them.

In the dark he could barely see the warm glow of Gabriel’s eyes. However, he could see enough to see them widen. Then, just faintly, he caught the crinkles at the edges of them that told him the archangel was smiling again. A second later the warmth of Gabriel’s hand was covering his. He’d pulled his hand from under his cheek and laid it over top of Sam’s.

For what felt like a long time the two of them just lay there. The longer they were there, the more Sam relaxed, and the heavier his eyes began to feel. Gabriel’s thumb was stroking over his hand again and he was content to just lay there.

The world felt kind of hazy around the edges and it was nice. It was almost like when Sam got pulled out of these dreams. That hazy moment that came between the dream and being away. Relaxing into it, Sam let his eyes close completely.

After a moment, he heard the soft sound of Gabriel’s voice, just barely a whisper. “It’ll be all right in the end, Sammy. You’ll see. Tomorrow, we’ll take you to Bobby’s, see if being around something familiar might spark something in you, and we’ll start working on trying to fix what we can in that head of yours. We’ll see about healing some of that damage in that noggin of yours. I’m not giving up on you.” The noise sounded sharper, just a bit fierce, yet Sam didn’t open his eyes. The tone wasn’t dangerous. He burrowed in a little closer and felt Gabriel squeeze his hand in response. “I’m not giving up on you. You were mine long before theirs and I’m not standing by to let them mess with you anymore.”

There, hiding in the dark under the bed with an archangel beside him, Sam slept.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poor Deano :( He keeps trying and Sam's just not ready for him yet. Hopefully things go better at Bobby's!


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter deals with Sam relearning some things, folks, like basic human hygiene. I almost didn’t put it but then I decided that I wanted to and that it just seemed better than glossing over it. So, if you don’t like it, I’m sorry. It’s not like I was really graphic on some things so you should be okay, but I still felt it needed at least a little warning.

Nightmares of pain and torture haunted Sam’s dreams through the night and he woke more than once with a gasp or a scream already building on his lips. It was confusing and terrifying and left him even more on edge than when he’d went to sleep. At some point, they’d moved from their hiding spot, ending up on top of the not-wing instead of under it. _Bed,_ his brain kept telling him. _It’s a bed!_ But the softness of it reminded him so much of wings curled around him and he found it hard to remember to call it by its actual name. It helped to settle him a little when Gabriel brought them up there, only for the next dream to send him shaking once more.

When the fifth dream woke him, Sam didn’t have the energy to do more than curl against Gabriel’s chest and sob. He’d long since given up any pretense of not hiding against the archangel. He curled into him and let Gabriel’s arms tighten around him and he just sobbed. What was going on? What was this? The torture-dreams, he could handle those. But this? What was this? This dreaming and waking and dreaming and waking and all of it filled with so much pain and fear that it left his soul screaming. What was happening? Things had never been like this before! There was no sleeping in the Cage. The only dreams were the torture-dreams. _What was this_?

Gabriel was there through every moment of it. Each time Sam woke, he was there to hold him, making soft crooning noises that slowly soothed Sam back down once more. He wanted to reach out and feel Gabriel’s grace wrap around him the way that Lucifer’s would, or how Michael’s would, but he didn’t know how to do it in this strange body he was in. This strange, physical thing that made no sense to him. He’d been too long without a body – he’d forgotten what it could be like. Forgotten the hunger pains that could eat at him. Forgotten the way it reacted, the tears that could burn his eyes and thicken his throat and choke him. Forgotten the functions that real bodies had.

 _That_ had made for some interesting moments in the night. Sam had vague memories of Gabriel snapping the bed clean when Sam woke from a dream feeling wet in a way that he could only vaguely remember feeling back in the beginning. Back when his body had been in the Cage with him and the torture-dreams had made him feel every degrading thing possible. He’d long since forgotten most of what came _Before_.

“Shhh.” Gabriel crooned to him, voice low and steady. “Shh, kiddo, you’re okay. You’re all right. I’ve got you. Nothing’s gonna hurt you here. I wish to Dad I knew you understood this. I wish I could stop it for you, Sammy, I really do. I don’t know why I can’t. You shouldn’t be dreaming like this with me here. I don’t know why I can’t make it stop.” Another sob had Gabriel pulling him in impossibly closer. One of his hands cupped Sam’s head and the other stroked over the long lines of his back. “Shh, sweetheart. Shh. I’ll figure out a way to help, I will. Just shh.”

Why wasn’t Lucifer taking him out of this? Sam thought that it might be a worse torture to be here and be taunted by the potential safety of Gabriel than any torture he’d had so far. To dream and remember and relive that pain and then to wake up to safety and comfort in Gabriel’s arms, like he was a real person again and these were just nightmares. This was so much worse. It taunted him with a hope he thought he’d lost long, long ago. _Centuries_ ago. For that, he sobbed all the more, not even realizing as he did that he started to call for Lucifer. Nor did he realize how Gabriel tensed against him at the sound of that name pouring past Sam’s lips.

He felt Gabriel’s hand tighten in his hair briefly and then legs were tangling in his and Sam was wrapped up, half underneath Gabriel and half against him, the soothing presence of the archangel keeping him safe. Against his hair, Gabriel started to whisper to him once more, his voice low and gentle and soothing Sam back towards sleep. “Shh, Sammy, he’s not here. He won’t hurt you again. Dad damn it, he never should’ve touched you to begin with. I’m so sorry, kiddo. I’m so sorry. Shh, he’s not here. He won’t hurt you. Shh.”

* * *

It was a little strange for Sam to leave the bedroom once he and Gabriel were both finally up. He felt out of it, not quite sure of himself and the things around him. This torture-dream he was in wasn’t anything like any other one he’d been in and he didn’t know how to act in here. He didn’t know what to do. It was all off and wrong from what he knew and it was leaving him off balance and unsure. The only thing he _was_ sure of was the archangel whose hand was in his. Sam kept a tight hold of it as Gabriel drew him out of the bedroom and into another room, one that he didn’t quite recognize.

Gabriel stopped by this strange sort of chair and turned to look at Sam. Then he made a funny face and sighed. “I have absolutely no idea how to do this. I’ve never had to teach a human how to be human before. So, as ridiculous as this feels, the only thing I can think of is that I’ve got to lead by example. And when you get all your screws back in place, I’m going to wipe this little scene right out of your memory and save us both the embarrassment. Okay?”

“No.” Sam said softly. His voice was a bit hoarse, his throat sore from all the crying, and it made Gabriel wince. Gentle fingers came up and brushed over his throat and Sam felt the ache ease away.

What came next was…weird. Sam was pulled up off to the side of Gabriel and the archangel tapped under both of Sam’s eyes and then pointed to himself. Did he want him to…watch him? Sam could do that. He could do that just fine. So he stood there and watched as Gabriel went through motions that felt just a little bit, familiar. Like this was something he knew or something he’d known once upon a time. When Gabriel was done he made a gesture for Sam to come forward and the younger Winchester realized that he wanted _him_ to try it now. It…it didn’t seem that hard. He could do what Gabriel had done.

It was easier than he’d expected. And he felt immense relief when he stood there and relieved himself. Part of the ache in his stomach was gone. _I…used to do this,_ he thought to himself. _This was something I did, wasn’t it? Something…normal._

Gabriel was grinning at him when he was done. “Hot damn, kid. That was a lot easier than I expected. No less awkward, of course, but easy. Right, well, next step. Get over here and wash your hands. Considering how often you’re latched onto mine, I’d like to make sure you remember this important step in things.”

Even though he couldn’t understand what Gabriel was saying, the constant stream of easy-going noise was soothing for Sam. He found he liked it. It kind of…grounded him. Steadied him. He listened happily to it as Gabriel took him to the thing with the water and they ran their hands under it. When Sam found that it wasn’t hot or cold, but just perfect, he didn’t smile though his grace-soul did perk up happily inside of him.

The next thing Gabriel did was draw him towards this big square box over in the corner of the room. It had Sam looking at it curiously; he trusted that Gabriel wasn’t going to bring him to something meant to hurt him. So when the archangel opened one of the doors, Sam peeked inside, curious about what was in here. Gabriel made soft happy sounds beside him. “Yeah, this might be another one you might want me to wipe out of your head later on. I should probably just leave this for your brother to show you but I’m not sure how you’re gonna react to him today. If it’s anything like yesterday, well, we’d be waiting a long time before you’d let him show you this, and I’m not willing to smell you until then. I won’t keep snapping you clean, either. You won’t learn anything that way.”

When Gabriel turned a few knobs and water started to come pouring out of the thing up high, it sent a jolt through Sam, memories of different water – _showers –_ had him shivering and latching on to Gabriel’s hand once more. Gabriel drew him in close and made those same soft sounds that he’d made last night. Then, with their joined hands, he reached inside and let Sam feel the water. He was surprised to find it wasn’t hot – _hot, so damn hot, burning and hurting, the sound of his screams echoing as the boiling water poured over him_ – and it wasn’t cold. It was warm and felt kind of…good. That distracted him enough that he didn’t even really notice at first when Gabriel snapped away his clothes. Not until he and Gabriel were suddenly stepping inside of that strange box and the door closed behind Gabriel.

Surprise had Sam’s eyes open wide. Gabriel smiled at him. “It’s okay.” He made that soothing-sound again and tugged on Sam’s hand, drawing him into the water. “That’s it, Sammy. You’re all right. Come on. We’re just gonna get you cleaned. Hate to break it to you, kiddo, but you’re getting a bit rank there. All that panic makes you sweat and, trust me, it aint exactly leaving you smelling like roses.” He drew Sam in until the water was pouring down right on his head and Sam gasped at it. It felt so good!

Making more happy sounds, Gabriel turned them so that Sam was the one mostly under the water, not him. “You know, when I pictured us in the shower together, it wasn’t exactly like this.” Gabriel said cheerfully. “You’re ruining my trickster reputation here, Sammy.”

Sam closed his eyes and tilted his head up until the water washed over his face. It was clean water, not filled with anything, not boiling, not freezing. He could’ve stood there and enjoyed it forever. When he felt something soft brush over his arm, he tilted his head enough to be able to look down and see the little bit of cloth that Gabriel was rubbing over his skin. Everywhere it went, white suds followed ever, and Sam lifted his arm to sniff at them. The pleasant smell put a shadow of a smile on his lips, which in turn made Gabriel grin. “Yeah, yeah, you smell great. Had to pick something good, didn’t I? Couldn’t have you going around smelling like that crap your brother uses. I watched you often enough to know you like using the good smelling shit. This is a blend a…well, let’s call her a friend…a friend of mine makes. Kind of makes you smell like a forest, really. It’s a good scent on you.”

He ran that cloth over every inch of Sam’s body. Then he snapped his fingers and Sam found himself being pushed down into a chair right there in the water. It made him about level with Gabriel’s stomach, and he noticed that the archangel was wearing shorts in here – bright orange shorts – and he was ridiculously pleased by that. He wasn’t sure how he would’ve felt seeing him naked. Just the thought made Sam shiver.

Seconds later he was shivering for an entirely different reason. Gabriel had poured some white stuff out of a bottle and was using it now to scrub through Sam’s hair. The younger Winchester almost purred as those fingers tugged at his hair and scratched at his scalp. It felt _amazing_.

Above him, Gabriel made more of those happy sounds. _Laughing._ “Always figured you kept this long for a reason. Kiddo, you are fulfilling all _sorts_ of fantasies for me right now.”

They stayed in that nice water for quite a while. But all too soon, Gabriel shut the water off and drew Sam out of there. He helped instruct Sam on how to dry off using a really, really soft cloth, and then walked him through dressing. Sam was kind of proud that that didn’t really take much help. Putting on the clothes didn’t really take any serious thought on his part. They were all soft, easy things, the names of which floated to the surface of his mind as he put them on. _Shirt. Boxers. Pants._

“There!” Gabriel declared, once he’d done something to Sam’s hair that had felt almost as good as getting it scrubbed. It had it lying flat and out of his face. “Dressed, brushed, and ready to face the world. Now it’s time to tackle the next important thing – breakfast!”

Sam found himself led back to that same place he’d been yesterday before things had gone sour. He couldn’t help how he tensed when Gabriel led him up to the exact same chair he’d been in yesterday. But Gabriel just squeezed his hand and smiled reassuringly at him. Then he pressed a hand on Sam’s shoulder and sat him down in the chair. “It’s fine, kiddo.” He ran a hand over Sam’s hair, smoothing it back from his face. Instead of going over to the big metal box like Dean had done, however, he lifted a hand and snapped. A plate of fruit appeared on the counter in front of them. Despite himself, Sam found his lips twitching ever so slightly, a sliver of humor slipping in. Only Gabriel would bring him to the room that held food only to end up snapping up something anyways instead of making it.

“All right, so, we’re gonna give this another try.” Gabriel told him. He kept his hand loosely held in Sam’s and turned himself so that he was leaning against the counter, able to face Sam and reach the plate at the same time. There was an easy smile on his lips and nothing about him looked tense. That, in turn, set Sam at ease a bit more. If Gabriel wasn’t worried it meant that Sam didn’t have anything to worry about, right? “Only, I think we’re gonna do this just a bit different today, Sambo, cause the last thing we want is a repeat of yesterday. So we’ve got a plastic plate here that won’t break and plenty of fruit as finger food. Something tells me trying out silverware might not be the smartest plan yet.”

As Sam watched, Gabriel reached out to the plate and picked up something red and juicy looking and popped it into his mouth without hesitation. He picked up another piece and held it out Sam’s direction, one eyebrow arched and his intent clear. Obviously he really wanted Sam to try this again. He wanted him to eat. That was…it was a normal human thing, right? One of those things that humans had to do every day. Sam tilted his head a little and studied the food in front of him. In his stomach he felt a low rumble that part of him vaguely registered as him being…hungry. Something he hadn’t realized yesterday yet recognized now. He was hungry. But, why? He didn’t need food. He didn’t need any of these human things that Gabriel was showing him this morning. So why was the archangel showing them to him?

Gabriel wasn’t going to just stop, though. Sam could see that. He was still holding the food, waiting as patiently as if he had nothing else in the world he needed to do. What else was Sam supposed to do? Slowly, even more hesitant than last time, he brought his hand up. This time there was no plate to knock over; the food was in Gabriel’s hand. There was nothing that got in the way of his fingers curling around that soft, cool piece of fruit, nothing to stop him from bringing it to his mouth and slipping it past his lips.

There was a large part of him that had been prepared for something horrible to happen. For the food to be disgusting, or rotten, or poisoned, or even for it to vanish once it got to his lips and taunted him with a hint of a taste. None of those things happened, though. Sam found his mouth full of an amazingly sweet flavor that he immediately wanted more of. Before he’d even finished chewing his eyes were darting to the plate and back to Gabriel again.

Grinning, Gabriel picked up the next piece of fruit. “Maybe this won’t be as hard as we thought. You seem to be remembering some things instead of having to straight up relearn them.” He passed the fruit to Sam, who took this one a bit more eagerly this time. It tasted so good!

The food disappeared rather quickly after that. Sam needed little encouragement from Gabriel to eat it all. When it was gone, the archangel beamed happily at Sam, and Sam’s grace-soul felt warm and happy inside in response. This was – it was nice.

When all the food was gone, a snap got rid of the plate and cleaned up any sticky mess off their fingers. Sam wasn’t sure what Gabriel had planned for next. He would follow the archangel’s lead in this. It only seemed right. Cocking his head, he watched Gabriel move, watched him slip sideways along the counter until he had managed to move himself right between Sam’s knees. Then, leaning back against the counter, he smiled at Sam. Their joined hands were held loosely, resting against Sam’s thigh, and they felt warm through the thin material of the pants he wore. It wasn’t a bad sensation, though. The warmth was nice. Comforting. Michael had been warm, usually. Warmth to Lucifer’s cold. Together, they’d made a perfect temperature, a nice little spot where Sam could hide and relax and be safe for just a little bit.

His attention was drawn away from their hands and his memories when Gabriel cleared his throat. The sound brought Sam’s head up, eyes flickering past the bits of hair that had slipped down to hide his face. He peeked out from them and watched Gabriel smile at him. “All right, kiddo. Before we head out I think it’s time to try something else out.” Gabriel told him. Then Sam watched curiously as his companion lifted his free hand and brought one finger forward to tap right against Sam’s chest, his eyes locked on Sam as he carefully and clearly said “Sam.” He said it slowly, the noise of it shifting from the usual mix of sound that Sam heard into one particular sound. It was slow enough that Sam could actually tell it was more than just noise. It was a word, one that he wanted Sam to know. “Sam.” He repeated, tapping his chest again. There was something on his face like he expected some sort of response and Sam wanted to give it. He really did. He just wasn’t sure if he could do it. Yet, how could he not try? Especially after everything good that Gabriel had given him so far?

A little fearful and a lot hesitant, Sam lifted his own hand and lightly tapped a finger over his chest. Then he tried to force his tongue to form the sounds he’d gone so long without uttering. “S-Sam.”

The smile that lit up Gabriel’s face was the brightest Sam had seen yet. It chased away his fear and set his grace-soul glowing happily inside of him. “That’s right!” Gabriel cried. He tapped his finger against Sam again and repeated it. “Sam!”

“Sam.” The word was easier to say the second time. Easier again on the third. “Sam.”

“Way to go, kiddo! That’s right, you’re Sam!”

Gabriel looked so happy by that single word. Like giving Sam his name was the greatest thing ever. If hearing Sam say his own name made him so happy, maybe Sam could make him even happier. Could he do it? Could he actually say something else? Something other than ‘No’ or ‘Sam’? There was only one way to tell. With a slightly shaking hand he reached out and put the point of one finger against Gabriel’s chest. He saw the other man’s eyes widen and surprise crossed his face. Flicking his gaze up to Gabriel’s eyes, he watched carefully as he tried to force the one word past his lips. “G-G’br’l.” No, no, that wasn’t quite right. That wasn’t _whole_. Frustrated, Sam furrowed his brows and tried again. “G’briel.”

“Holy shit.” Gabriel breathed out. He looked…Sam wasn’t quite sure what the word was for what he looked like. It wasn’t good, though. That much he could tell.

The fear came back stronger than ever. Had he been wrong? Was this something that Gabriel wasn’t happy about? Sam tried to draw back, curling in the hand he’d been tapping at Gabriel with, and he tried to tug his other hand free only to have Gabriel’s hold tighten on it. The fear grew stronger and Sam couldn’t stop the whimper that slipped past his lips. He hadn’t meant to upset him! He’d wanted to give him something to make him happy! To show him thanks for what he’d done. It’d seemed like Gabriel _wanted_ him to talk. But he must’ve gotten it wrong. _Stupid,_ he told himself, hunching down and pulling back as best as he could in his seat. _Stupid, stupid, stupid_.

His whimpers had an immediate reaction in the archangel. Gabriel tugged on his hand and drew him forward, his other hand coming to brush past the screen of Sam’s hair and curve over his cheek, sliding down to cup the side of his neck while his thumb ran over Sam’s jawline. “Hey, hey, shh, it’s okay, kiddo. It’s all right. You’re not in trouble.” Gabriel told him, the words jumbling together into this stream of noise that Sam didn’t know, didn’t understand, and the emotion in it conflicted so much he wasn’t sure if it was good or bad, if he was in trouble or not. Sam whimpered again and Gabriel pulled him in closer until their foreheads were pressed together and those amber eyes were right in front of him. “Shh, Sam, you’re okay. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you. You’re okay, kiddo. I just, I wasn’t expecting that. Holy hell, I _really_ wasn’t expecting that. What kind of future are you from that you know who _I_ am? If you know who I am, how the hell did you end up in the Cage with my brothers?”

“N-No.” Sam whimpered out. _I’m sorry,_ he wanted to say. _I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!_ “No.”

Gabriel winced and Sam could feel the unhappy emotions rolling off of him. He watched those eyes close and Gabriel pressed their foreheads together a little more. “Shh, Sam. You’re all right. You’re not in trouble. Damn it, I wish to Dad you understood me. You’re not in trouble.” His voice sounded so sad Sam wished he could make it better. He wished he knew a way to make it okay again. _I won’t talk if you don’t want me to_ , he wanted to promise. _Please, Gabriel. Please! I’m sorry!_

He didn’t realize at first that those last words had slipped past his lips. Not until Gabriel’s eyes snapped open wide and stunned in front of him. “Son of a bitch.” Gabriel breathed out. Every inch of him was frozen. Then, in the only language Sam knew, in the language that had become the only real thing Sam understood anymore, the archangel said “ _Samuel – do you understand me?_ ”


	7. Chapter 7

The words echoed through Sam and he knew his eyes were wide. Just as he knew his face answered Gabriel’s question far clearer than any words he could’ve said. Sam had no idea why it hit him so hard to hear Enochian slipping from Gabriel’s lips. Maybe it was because only Michael and Lucifer spoke that. No one in his torture-dreams ever did. Just those two. They spoke it, sang it, their voices musical and beautiful, winding around him and chasing away some of the dark. But no one else ever uttered it. Maybe that was why it was such a shock to Sam’s system to hear it from Gabriel.

“ _You do._ ” Gabriel said, his own eyes wide as well. “ _I cannot believe I did not think of this before. It makes sense. I would imagine that was all they spoke._ ”

Something in Sam squeezed tight at hearing words that he actually _understood_. Everything about this dream kept changing on him and it left him feeling out of sorts and so unsure of what to do. This wasn’t how things went. He wasn’t prepared to deal with having Gabriel here, let alone being able to talk to him. When was the last time he’d spoken more than a ‘No’ to anyone that wasn’t Michael or Lucifer? Come to think of it, when was the last time he’d said much of anything even to them? Sam had a heart stopping moment where he wondered if he was losing the ability to speak Enochian, too. He could still understand it but was he losing his ability to speak it as well? Or was it just fear that closed his throat up tight right now?

Whatever it was, it didn’t matter. Gabriel’s expression went soft and he leaned in just enough to brush his nose against Sam’s nose, their foreheads still pressed together. “ _Hey, it will be all right. You do not have to try talking yet. Just having you able to understand me is a big step. You do not have to talk until you are ready, all right?_ ”

After a moment of quiet, Sam nodded. He was grateful Gabriel wasn’t pushing it. This was just… this was so much! Everything was different and strange and it scared him. Sam didn’t want to push it any further. Not… not yet.

Gabriel smiled at him and the knot inside of Sam's stomach eased just the slightest bit. “ _At least we know now I can talk to you and you can understand me_.” The archangel told him, still smiling. Then something that looked like humor snapped in his eyes. “ _Though it will be interesting to see your brother's expression when he hears us_.”

Thinking of Dean was enough to make Sam cringe just a little. He wanted to believe that the one he was seeing really was his brother. Even though he knew he was still in the dream, he wanted to believe that this was Dean. That Dean was really here. Because if it was Dean, it meant that Sam was safe. It would mean that he was out and free and back home. It would mean that Sam was really and truly safe. Dean wouldn’t let anything happen to him. He always kept Sam as safe as he could. Unlike with Lucifer and Michael, who could only pull him out of his torture-dreams and try to heal him, being with Dean would mean that Sam was topside again and away from that kind of pain.

The idea of that was both thrilling and just a bit terrifying.

It made him just slightly ashamed to admit how scared he was by the idea of being out of the Cage. Not that he wanted to be here, being tortured. No one wanted that. But...there was a small part of him that was sure he deserved it. He deserved this pain for all the pain that he’d caused. And besides, Sam wasn’t sure he would know how to function out in the real world again. He didn’t know if he would be able to exist without the two archangels who had come to mean everything to him and who had pieced his soul back together. Was there even enough left of him to be considered human anymore? Was there enough left of his mind to keep him sane and functioning?

Sam was pulled out of his thoughts when the pressure against his forehead pulled back and warm hands came up to cup his cheeks. He hadn’t realized that he was crying silently until Gabriel’s thumbs brushed over his cheeks and wiped them away. Again, Sam was grateful. Gabriel said absolutely nothing about the tears. He just brushed them away until they stopped and he smiled so sweetly at him, it was easy to forget that there was a trickster mixed in with this archangel.

If he hadn’t been so afraid of speaking, there was a part of Sam that would’ve asked what was going on here. A part that was amazed at seeing so much of the archangel and so little of the trickster. Where was the being who had tortured them to teach them a lesson? Granted, Sam knew why he’d done it and he wished he could go back in time and listen to him, listen to what he was trying to teach, but it didn’t change what had happened. Gabriel’s methods weren’t exactly gentle. So where had this sweet being come from?

If he hadn’t been able to feel the grace inside of Gabriel, he would’ve been sure that he really was part of the torture-dream. Some strange thing built to make him trust and then knock him down. Because the Gabriel he knew was cocky, sassy, arrogant in some ways, slightly bitter, cynical, and full of snark and mocking commentary. There was more to him, of course, so much more, hidden underneath all of those, but those were the things he tended to show the general public. Not... not this. Not the sweetness and gentleness and care that he was showing Sam.

“ _Come on, Samuel_.” Gabriel murmured to him. He brushed the last of the tears off of Sam’s face and then slid his hands down, never breaking contact as they went down Sam’s neck, his shoulders, down his arms, and finally to his hands. Their fingers threaded together and Gabriel took a step back, drawing Sam up from the chair and up to his feet. “ _Why do we not go find your brother and Robert? I am sure that they are both eager to see you_.”

The words were so formal sounding – which was common for Enochian, Sam had noticed, the formality of things, the lack of contractions – and it only made Gabriel sound even more different than Sam was used to. He didn’t focus on that, though, as Gabriel’s words sank in. He was going to take him to Dean and to... to Bobby.

“Not that I know what the hell I’m gonna tell them.” Gabriel murmured in English once more, the words lost on the younger Winchester. “I’m not looking to out all my secrets. But I’ve got a feeling asking you to keep them isn’t exactly going to work all that well. This is a hell of a mess I’ve let you get me in, kiddo. A hell of a mess.” Still, despite whatever he was saying – and Sam figured the archangel knew Sam couldn’t understand him so he had to be talking to himself – he reached out to drag Sam in.

As the archangel pulled him in close, Sam couldn’t help but wonder.

If Gabriel was real, and all this was a dream, why was the archangel taking him to see people? Why wasn’t he getting him out?

* * *

Sam wasn’t sure how he felt when he and Gabriel flew away from the safety of the little hideout and off to Bobby’s house. In Sam’s memories were images of Bobby; his gruff expression, the dirty trucker cap, rough hands that were gentle as they curved over Sam’s shoulders, the steady pat of a hand against his back when he’d done something right, the sight of Bobby cooking up a pot of ‘Stuff’ on the stovetop for the boys when Sam was still small enough to need a phone book to sit on. Those flashed through his mind and brought both love and pain. Love, for what he saw. Pain, for all the holes that he found. He could recall Bobby’s rare smile, full of pride, but he couldn’t remember the color of the man’s eyes. He could remember eating meals in the kitchen but couldn’t even really picture the rest of the house. He knew that there had been a dog at one point, the vague knowledge there, but couldn’t remember anything else about it.

“ _All will be well._ ” Gabriel murmured to him. He kept one hand laced with Sam’s as he took him from one place to the next.

They landed the kitchen that Sam recognized from his memories. He was surprised by the warm feeling that filled him just by standing in here. His eyes went over everything, drinking in the details, filling in the little parts that he’d thought for sure he didn’t remember. _If I don’t remember them, than how could the image have been created in this torture-dream? Either I remember more than I think, or some of these details are just filled in, made up. Not real._ That made him feel a little sick.

He broke his gaze away from the room around him to turn back to the only thing that he felt safe to really look at – Gabriel. He, at least, was familiar, even if this whole ‘nice guy’ bit was strange.

As if Gabriel had heard those thoughts, when Sam looked at him he found it wasn’t the gentle archangel he’d been dealing with who was at his side right now.

It was Loki.

The soft smiles and gentle eyes were gone, hidden underneath a mask that Sam always thought of as the Trickster. As Loki. The memories that Sam had of him were almost like two distinctive people instead of one person. In a way, it was like he could remember Loki, who he’d met posing as a janitor, who’d trapped him in Mystery Spot, who’d stuck them in TV Land. And he remembered Gabriel, standing in a ring of fire talking about his family, or standing up to his brother in a showdown that cost him his life.

Loki was the one that was standing beside Sam now. Pagan power filled him, easy for Sam’s grace-soul to feel. He wore a familiar smirk and his eyes were almost dancing with mischievousness. Even the way he stood, his free hand shoved down into his pocket and his shoulders back and relaxed, all of it was Loki. Instead of bothering Sam, it actually set him more at ease. It reassured him just a little bit more that this was really Gabriel. The niceness he’d shown so far was great – it’d been perfect, exactly what he needed – but this was a part of him as well and honestly, it was the side Sam was more used to.

He was grateful Gabriel didn’t let go of his hand, though. Especially when he saw Dean come walking into the room, with Bobby right behind him.

Sam stared at the two of them and drank in the sight of them. Even though this wasn’t real, he couldn’t help himself. It felt so good to see them. To see familiar faces looking at him with wonder and affection and not anger or hate or disgust. No one was shouting things at him or trying to hurt him – at least not yet. He was going to soak it all up while he could.

“Hey, Sammy.” Dean said, smiling at him. It was a shaky smile, not all that happy, and his eyes flickered over to glare briefly at Gabriel before they settled back on Sam.

Beside him, Bobby smiled as well, cautious and just a bit unsure. “Hey there, boy.”

Whatever they were saying wasn’t angry sounding. It didn’t have the tones to it that anger did. Sam had no idea what it was they said, but he could read those tones and he could read the smiles they wore. His own lips twitched in his hesitant version of a smile.

Beside him, Gabriel had no issues at all with grinning, even if his was full of mockery. “Well, now that we’ve had that painfully awkward moment. He still doesn’t understand English, boys. Though he does seem to understand his name so long as you say it clearly.” He made one of those happy sounds that Sam found he really liked to hear.

The smile wiped off of Dean’s face and his scowl kicked back in strong enough to have Sam taking a small step backwards. What was going on? Whatever Gabriel was saying must’ve really upset him. Dean didn’t look happy at all.

“I thought you were supposed to be _helping_ him?” Dean growled. “We had a deal.”

Gabriel’s lip curled up into a sneer that would’ve terrified Sam if it was directed his way. As it was, he went very, very still and watched them all carefully. “Mind your manners with me, bucko. Seeing as how I spent the night cleaning up _your_ mess, you could show a little gratitude. It took me hours just to get him relaxed enough to get out from where he was hiding under the bed and hours after that to get through the nightmares enough for him to be able to even think of getting out of bed. Then, _then_ , I got him up, _showered_ , and dressed, and I got him to even eat a bit for breakfast. But oh, no, tell me again how I’ve done nothing to honor our deal, kid.”

Sam watched as the noise Gabriel made had Dean deflating slightly. He didn’t look as angry anymore, though the annoyance was still clear. Then Bobby was grabbing Dean’s shoulder and pulling him back a step. He looked at Dean briefly before turning back to Gabriel. “I aint gonna claim to understand why you’re helping the boy, but I can be grateful you are. Why don’t you come sit down an tell us about what’s going on an what we can do to help?”

“Bobby!” Dean exclaimed.

The older hunter glared at Dean. “What? You got a better idea, Dean?”

“I’m surprised.” Gabriel said slowly. “Honestly, I expected a lot more yelling, maybe another gunshot or two.”

Bobby made some sound that Sam wasn’t quite sure of. He still looked annoyed but there was something else on his face. Something odd that Sam wasn’t quite sure of. He hated this! He hated not knowing what was going on and being left in the dark. All this noise felt impossible to understand no matter how hard he was trying to listen. For the first time in a long time he was actually trying to pay attention to and understand the noise, if only to get this whole torture-dream to make some sort of sense. If Gabriel wasn’t going to get him out of here and Lucifer wasn’t coming yet, Sam was going to be stuck here, and if he was stuck here he wanted it to make sense. He wanted… he wanted that connection, at least for a little bit. It’d hurt more in the long run, he knew. Once it was gone it would probably break him a little more. Sam didn’t really care about that. Something told him that he wouldn’t survive much longer anyways. It’d take so long the last time they pulled him out just to get him back to somewhat normal. They’d never given him so much grace before. Could they even pull him out anymore? Or was he… was he just going to be stuck in this – forever?

He looked over at Gabriel, who was still watching Bobby with one eyebrow raised and a smirk on his lips, and who was still holding Sam’s hand. If he was stuck, at least he was in good company.

No one seemed to notice Sam’s moment of introspection. Bobby snorted and shook his head. “I got eyes in my head, don’t I?” He asked, and Sam only held back from answering this question when he saw it was directed at Gabriel, not him. “Dean told me he was clinging to you an he aint let go of you once since you came in. Until we figure out why, I’ll hold my shots.” Then Bobby’s face hardened. “But if I find out you’ve got something to do with all this, that you’re tricking my boy somehow or making him cling to you, you damn well better believe I’ll find a way to kill you this time.”

The grin that lit up Gabriel’s face eased some of Sam’s tension. “Duly noted, Gramps.”

For the first time since they’d arrived, Gabriel turned towards Sam and smiled up at him, the mask of Loki falling away just enough for him to see the archangel in his eyes. “ _My apologies for leaving you out of the conversation, Samuel. I was not ignoring you._ ” His voice was low, pitched for Sam’s ears and Sam’s ears alone. The hunter had no idea how he heard it, or how he knew that the other two couldn’t. He just… did.

When Gabriel’s free hand came up to cup his cheek, he didn’t think about how he leaned into it.

“ _They want to talk with me for a bit. Would you like to come and sit with me?_ ”

Sam nodded ever so slightly. He knew Gabriel would feel it even if he didn’t quite see it. The smile that he got in return was warm with just a hint of something else that warmed Sam’s insides. Pulling on Sam’s hand, the archangel led him over to the couch in a small room that was full of books and smelled kind of like old whiskey. Sam didn’t quite understand why that smell made him want to smile or how it made the tension in his shoulders melt away a little.

That tension came back once he was tucked down onto the couch with Gabriel. He looked up and found both Dean and Bobby looming over him and he couldn’t help how he curled himself in a little more to make a smaller target.

The two men cringed and Gabriel gave his hand a squeeze that he knew was meant to be reassuring. It didn’t quite work.

Just moments before Sam had wanted nothing more than to just soak up the hint of connection with these two. To pretend for a little while that things were okay. Now? Now, that feeling was gone, replaced with an exhaustion that probably should’ve scared him for how quickly and deeply it came on him. Sam had barely been awake for long – _or whatever passes for awake and asleep in this strange dream –_ and already he felt so exhausted. The shift in mood was quick and extreme, yet he couldn’t help it.

Closing his eyes, he let his himself curl downwards in his seat until he could rest his head against Gabriel’s shoulder. He didn’t want to deal with the rest of this. The pain would come soon, that he was sure of. It wasn’t a matter of _if_ – it was a matter of _when_. Why should he sit up and keep fighting and waiting for it?

“Sam?”

That was Dean’s voice, saying the one word that Sam knew. The one he knew meant _him_. Gabriel had taught that to him this morning. But Sam didn’t care about answering. He didn’t even care about answering with his usual ‘no’ to any question. He was just… he was tired.

Gabriel shifted a little under him and it felt like he was going to pull away. There was no time for Sam to even think about whether he wanted to protest or not. Warm hands gentle cradled his head and Sam felt himself being drawn down. He didn’t bother opening his eyes. He just let himself feel as Gabriel scooted over and as he laid Sam’s head down in his lap. With his legs curled up, he compacted himself down into this tiny little couch and let his head rest in the lap of an archangel. Through his lashes he took a peek just as Gabriel drew one leg up and crossed it over the other, that foot pointing towards Sam, and in that move he made a sort of tiny little nest there for Sam’s head to hide in. With Gabriel’s leg blocking his view and his warm hand starting to card through Sam’s hair, it was perfect. It was safe and sheltered and Sam sighed down into it. Let Gabriel deal with these hallucinations, constructs, whatever they were. Sam was just too tired. Here, he could soak in the noise they made, feel that connection that he wanted before, without having to do a thing. He could feel it all from the safety of the archangel’s embrace.

“ _Rest, Samuel._ ” Gabriel’s fingers slipped through his hair and gave gentle, delicious little tugs that seemed to pull the headache right out of him. “ _Just rest._ ”

“What the hell?” Dean’s voice was loud, with that worried/angry edge that Sam felt like he knew so well. It was a sound that meant Dean was scared and was trying to cover it up. He did that a lot. Recognizing that kept Sam from jumping at it. “Dude, what is going on? He was upright and fine like, five seconds ago!”

The snort Gabriel gave move his body just enough for Sam to feel it. “You do realize the fact that he’s upright at all is amazing, right?” His hand kept up its slow stroking as he spoke and Sam sighed happily into the touch. “Somehow, a future version of your brother got shot back in time. That right there would be exhausting enough to require days of rest for his soul to heal from it. Add in where I’m pretty sure he was before he got shot back and the damage that was done to him while he was there – you’re lucky he’s not curled up comatose somewhere right now. His soul’s still trying to heal from what happened to him in the future as well as from the time travel, on top of how hard his head is trying to work to sort everything out and make sense of it. So yeah, he’s gonna probably sleep a whole lot more than you like. Just getting up, showering and eating probably took most of his energy.”

“All right, boys.” Bobby cut in, his voice a deep rumble that made Sam’s lips twitch in what could’ve been a smile. “Why don’t we can the bullshit and stop bickering so maybe we can get around to actually trying to fix Sam? I mean, if that’s what you two still feel like doing…”

Sam pressed his cheek against Gabriel’s leg and enjoyed the way the power in him grew warmer with the happy-sounds he made. “I like you.” He declared in a voice as happy as the sounds he’d been making. “All right, gentlemen. I suggest you get comfortable. There’s a lot more to all this than you realize and it’s gonna take a while to explain it all.” There was the sound of movement around them and Sam guessed that the others were moving.

Something in Gabriel had gone tense in a way that made Sam’s stomach twist a bit. The hand in his hair had stopped moving and Sam rubbed his cheek against Gabriel’s leg to try and encourage that movement again. He made a soft, happy sound when Gabriel got the clue and started to stroke at his hair again. He felt the archangel take a breath that he knew he didn’t need. “To get it all, we’d have to go back a long ways. But for the sake of saving time, our story starts when Deano here went to hell…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, everyone, I'm loving your comments! Don't be afraid to let me know what you think! Are things happening too fast, too slow? Characters too OOC for you? Reviews, no matter what they are, are wonderful!


	8. Chapter 8

It took a good forty minutes to be able to explain the entire apocalypse to Dean and Bobby. Gabriel walked them through it, giving them the details he just knew Castiel and the other angels hadn’t. He told them about the seals, about how the first one had needed to be broken, and he told them about how the last seal had to be broken – and how the angels wanted it to happen. That was where he first had to pause things, because the cursing coming from Dean kept him from continuing on.

Sam had passed out about halfway through Gabriel’s storytelling, so it wasn’t that difficult to use just a tiny bit of grace to make sure that he stayed asleep. Not much – he didn’t want to risk messing with things too much. There was still way too much chaos in Sam’s noggin to risk doing a whole lot. But a little sliver of grace to make sure he stayed asleep for now? That was easy. So long as nightmares didn’t start to creep in, that was. Gabriel’s grace should’ve helped to keep the nightmares at bay just from his close proximity but it hadn’t worked last night. At least, not for long. The dreams that drifted in were too strong and knocked down the little wards that Gabriel was safe putting up. If this worked anything like last night did, Gabriel figured he’d have another fifteen minutes at most before a nightmare started to break in.

He really needed to figure out some way to fix some of the damage in there without causing more harm than good. Strong though Sam may be – and this proved he was damn strong – there was only so much a soul and mind could take, even if they were somehow amazingly fueled with grace.

Bobby was the one to shut down Dean’s ranting. He did it simply and easily, with a loud “Shut up!” and a fierce glare that left Gabriel just a bit impressed. He was liking this hunter more and more as time went on. “Why don’t’ you save your bitching till the end and let him get all of this out, first! I got a feeling there’s a lot more yet.”

“Oh, you got no idea, old man.” Gabriel drawled out.

This next part of things was going to get a bit tricky. So far, he’d managed to tell his story without ever revealing just who he actually was. He was going to have to play this very carefully until he made a decision about what he wanted to do and how much he wanted to trust these two. Ever since Sam had said his name, his actual freaking name, a part of him had known that it was going to come up with these two at some point. He just really didn’t want to deal with that yet. For a long time now Gabriel had been in hiding. He wasn’t exactly looking to come out. _Not that I’m going to get much of a choice_ , he thought as he looked down at the sleeping moose in his lap.

A huff and a thump had him looking back up. Dean was once more sprawled in the kitchen chair that he’d dragged in here for their talk. Bobby still sat partially on his desk, his serious eyes glaring at Dean one last time before turning back to Gabriel. “We’ll get to the whole ‘angels want the apocalypse’ bit later. What I wanna know is, what’s this got to do with what’s wrong with Sam?”

Smart man – straight to the point. Gabriel ran his hands through Sam’s hair in a gesture that was more self-soothing than anything else right now. Sam was too out to notice. “A lot of this next bit is guesswork. It’s what I can piece together from what I saw when I took a peek, what I’ve seen from how he acts, and what I picked up from his nightmares last night.” Because Sam, with that grace to fuel it, had always had a hint of psychic powers. That wasn’t just because of the demon blood that the Sam of this time was drinking. Those powers had always been there. They were just, more now. And they’d helped to project little snippets of his dreams last night when they’d gotten really bad. “From what I can gather, in his timeline this Sam broke the last seal and let Lucifer out. And that’s where shit started to hit the fan. You know you’re Michael’s vessel, right?” He directed that part to Dean and saw him grimace, saw his slight nod. “Yeah, thought so. Thought they might’ve pushed that one by now.”

He saw it hit on Bobby, saw when the realization grew on his face. His eyes snapped down to Sam and then back up to Gabriel. “He’s Lucifer’s vessel.”

Gabriel snapped his fingers and pointed at Bobby. “Yep! Brothers for brothers.”

“ _Jesus_.” Dean breathed out. He looked stunned. Too stunned to start yelling thankfully. But his eyes were wide and he looked like someone had slapped him. Then, in the blink of an eye, his gaze narrowed on Gabriel. “How the hell do you know all this? How does a trickster end up knowing angel crap?”

This was where things might get a little tricky. Gabriel carefully kept the mask of Loki in place and smirked. “What, you think we don’t pay attention to something as big as the _apocalypse_ , bucko? All the gods out there are keeping an eye on things. We’re really not that fond of this world going kaput, y’know.”

“Gods? You’re trying to tell me you’re a _god_?”

Gabriel let his smirk grow wider. “Pagan god, actually. Loki, if you wanna be specific. Better than just having you call me ‘trickster’ over and over, cute as all these little pet names are, sweet cheeks. But, we’re not here for _my_ story. I was trying to tell you Sam’s. Unless you’ve decided you don’t wanna hear it.” He arched an eyebrow and then chuckled a little when he saw Dean actually swallow down whatever he wanted to say next. Oh, this post-hell Dean was a lot easier to screw with. His temper simmered just under the surface and the trickster in Gabriel wanted nothing more than to poke at it, over and over again, just to see what kind of response he could get. He stowed that for now and reminded himself he was doing this for Sammy, for the one human he had more than a passing tolerance for. “That’s what I thought. Now, as I was saying! Sammy boy here is Luci’s vessel. For angels to ride a vessel, they need consent. They aren’t like demons, just hopping in whoever they want. They need their vessel to say Yes and let them in.”

“Who the hell would say Yes?” Dean asked, surprised.

“You’d be surprised.” A slightly darker note twisted Gabriel’s voice. “I imagine they can be pretty inventive. How long do you think you’d keep saying no if someone took your bro and started torturing him in front of you?” At Dean’s grimace, he nodded. “Yeah. You’re already starting to realize angels aren’t all sunshine and daisies. Don’t forget that, bucko. They won’t play by rules you like.”

“Dean said you thought Sam believed he was in the cage.” Bobby interjected, drawing their conversation back on track. “You meant the cage that holds Lucifer.”

“Yeah.” A shiver ran down Gabriel’s spine. Even thinking about it was enough to make him feel sick, and archangels didn’t get sick. Thinking about everything else only added to that feeling. He didn’t let it show in his voice, though. He kept all the emotion bottled up inside. “From what I could piece together, I’m guessing that somehow in the future, these two muttonheads somehow found a way to actually open the Cage back up. Only, once it’s open, there’s gotta be a way to force him back in. I got a glimpse when I was in Sam’s grapefruit – not sure how accurate it was, but I’m guessing he said Yes and then got control and dragged not just Lucifer, but Michael back down in there.”

The whole room went quiet at that. Gabriel couldn’t blame them for how stunned they looked. They should look that way. They should be stunned and amazed and damn proud of the broken kid still sleeping here. If Gabriel had read things right, and he was positive he had, what Sam had done was beyond amazing. To gain back control from an archangel and then sacrifice everything to save the world, knowing that there was really no chance of getting out – there were no words to describe the immensity of that. Rightfully, it should put Sam’s name in the record books, right along with every other martyr. Only no one would ever know. No one would know how Sam Winchester had saved the world and almost destroyed himself to do it.

“I don’t know how long he was down there.” Gabriel said softly into the quiet room. He looked down at Sam, brushing a bit of hair back from a face that was already starting to tense a little, those persistent nightmares starting to push to try and get in. “Like I told Deano over there, Sam’s soul is _millennia_ old. The damage in there is… it’s huge. The only thing that’s held him together so far is…” He wasn’t sure how they were going to take this, but there was no hiding it, not with Sam’s little flying tricks he’d showed so far. “…somehow, there’s grace mixed in there. Everywhere there’s damage, there’s grace – and there’s a lot of damage. He’s almost more grace than soul right now. They’re…fused together.” Like someone had deliberately put the grace in there. But why? Why would his brothers do that? Why would they torture him and then put grace in there to save him? They could’ve just patched him up, over and over, if they wanted to heal him for more torture. Why put grace in there? It didn’t make sense.

Apparently this was where things reached _too much_ for Dean. The sound of his chair hitting the floor echoed loudly in the quiet room and he was halfway gone when Gabriel looked up. A second later, the door slammed shut.

Gabriel stroked soothingly at Sam’s head when he felt him jump slightly, either the sound or the emotion pushing in to him and disturbing his sleep.

Once he got him calm and was sure he was going to stay out, he looked up only to find that bobby was staring at him with a thoughtful look on his face. There was hurt in his eyes, a soul deep ache for the one he considered his boy, but there was intelligence there too and a sharp mind that had more questions than answers right now. “How’d he get sent back if he was in the Cage?”

That was a damn good question – one Gabriel didn’t have the answer to. “I don’t know.” That wasn’t easy to admit. “It doesn’t make any sense. A lot of this doesn’t. And I don’t think it’s going to until I can figure out how to start fixing things in there without accidentally ripping him apart even more.”

“Can you do it?”

Gabriel appreciated that Bobby didn’t question his motives the way that Dean did. He didn’t understand why – it would’ve made a lot more sense for the hunter to distrust him just as much as everyone else – but he wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth. It was already clear he’d be fighting Dean every single step of the way. “I don’t have much of a choice.” None of them did. “Even if Dean manages to remember our deal and keep this from his angel stalkers, eventually they’re gonna start looking for the boys. An there are other things out there that are gonna start looking for Sam. They need him to break that seal.”

“If they find him like this, he won’t stand a chance against em.” Bobby said.

“Exactly.” Gabriel once more looked at the boy, at the lines that were starting to form by his eyes, the pain that was clearly building on his face. His grace ached in a way he hadn’t known it could. It ached almost as bad as it had so long ago, when he’d watched a brother he loved get locked away. He couldn’t sit back and watch this war destroy anyone else. _Damn you, kiddo. I never wanted involved in this crap. But I can’t walk away from you._ “However Sam got sent back, this is a second chance for him, a chance to keep things from happening. I won’t let him go through all that again.”

* * *

It was much easier to sit back and let Bobby go outside and handle the older Winchester. For the moment, his hands were full with the younger one. Or, well, if one wanted to get technical, Sam could be considered older now. Quite a bit older. But Gabriel had his hands full soothing away the nightmare that struck once it jerked Sam up out of sleep.

By the time Bobby and Dean came back inside, ready to talk, Sam was mostly out again. He was drifting on that edge between asleep and awake. Gabriel looked up at the two men came in and he fixed them with a serious look. “He’s only half out, so watch your moods. He picks up on those more than anything else right now.”

The two were smart enough to stop and both take a deep breath before they came in anymore. Gabriel could feel as the both worked to settle their emotions. Good. If he could feel that, hopefully Sam could, too.

Dean straightened up his chair from the floor and settled down into it once more. This time, when he looked at Gabriel there was anger hidden in his eyes, but it was tempered underneath iron control and the absolute love that these boys held for one another. The bond they shared was beyond amazing and Gabriel still couldn’t quite believe or understand it sometimes. In his experience, brothers didn’t last like this. They didn’t stick together this way. Yet these two not only stuck together, they kept on rolling, kept fighting, kept trying to do what was right. Even when they did things wrong, even when they screwed up, it was in an effort to do the right thing, or to do what they could to save one another. “All right.” Dean said, his voice a whole lot steadier than before. “What do we gotta do to get Sammy up and running again?”

The slight car analogy made Gabriel snort out a low laugh. He saw Sam’s lips twitch ever so slightly at his amusement. The kid responded so much to emotions around him. “The way things stand, I can’t go into his head right now. Not while he’s so tore up inside. I can keep him steady, feed him enough power…” _grace_ “…to keep him from getting _worse_. But we gotta get him working on this, too. If he’s too mixed up in all that chaos, he could get lost in it when I go in there.” A simplified explanation, yet it was the best he could give without giving away too much of himself. He needed Sam to trust them all at least somewhat before he attempted to go back in. Already, he and Sam were on their way to that. The kid amazingly seemed to trust him right now for some reason. But he really needed to be sure of that trust before he stepped back inside the kid so he could be sure that the grace in him wouldn’t fight him. So far, it seemed to respond to Sam. It wasn’t a foreign part of him. It _was_ him. It’d merged with his soul so much it was his now. “I can’t go in there until Sam trusts us and he has some kind of control on that grace in him, or he could fight me and hurt himself more. That means that I’ve got to try and teach him some kind of control, and I need you two to help start teaching him what it means to be Sam again. What it means to be human.”

“How are we supposed to do that when he can’t even understand us?” Bobby asked.

“The part of Sam that understands you is still in there somewhere.” Gabriel told them. “He just needs to find it again. It’s gonna take time and effort.” _Time we don’t have, dammit_ , “But it can be done. Hell, I taught him his name over breakfast. An he learned how to take care of things in the bathroom. He just needs reminded of who he is and what he can do. It’s all in there, we just gotta help him find it again. Besides,” Here was another tricky part, a part he wasn’t sure how these two would take and he wasn’t sure his flimsy explanations would work for. _Here’s hoping._ “He understands more than we think. I followed a hunch this morning and found out something that’ll work in our favor. Apparently, while he was in the Cage, Sammy picked up a new language.”

Again, it was Bobby who caught on first. “Enochian.”

“Right again, gramps.” Gabriel said, grinning broadly at the scowl that got him. “That was probably all those two dicks spoke to each other. So it kinda makes sense it’s become Sammy’s main language. He won’t speak it, not yet, but he understands it. It’s not just noise, like English is to him. He actually understands the words.”

“And let me guess.” Dean said dryly. “You just so happen to speak Enochian. The language of the angels.”

“What can I say, Deano? My awesomeness knows no bounds.”

Sam started to stir against him and Gabriel’s eyes snapped down to the hunter. Sleep was falling away from him and he was gradually moving more towards the side of ‘awake’. Gabriel watched him wake up and carefully pulled himself back to that calm center that he’d found earlier this morning while helping Sam. “All right, gentlemen. Looks like talking time is over. Let’s get this show on the road.”

* * *

In making all his plans, Gabriel should’ve remembered that the world didn’t often like to work in the Winchesters favor. He should’ve remembered that bad luck seemed to follow them around like a creepy ex-girlfriend who didn’t know how to let go. And he definitely should’ve remembered that anything that had to do with his family was almost guaranteed to screw him over somehow.

They barely had a day before their carefully constructed plan went flying out the window.

After the talk with Dean and Bobby, the group had spent most of the day at Bobby’s house. Nothing big had happened, nothing really noteworthy. Sam clung to Gabriel like he was terrified everything would vanish if he let go. It bothered the hell out of Dean, who spent quite a lot of time stepping outside to get his annoyance under control. Seeing Sam cling to the trickster of all creatures – and not clinging to his brother – was grating on him. Bobby took it all in stride. But Sam stuck to Gabriel like glue and mostly watched the world around him with a look of fear and sorrow that was hard to look at. It was like he was terrified of it all, yet couldn’t seem to keep from drinking it all in.

By the time night rolled around, they’d managed to get a little bit of food in Sam’s stomach, and they’d also managed to use the same methods Gabriel had to get him to understand everyone’s name. Gabriel had even managed to discreetly get Sam to call him Loki instead of Gabriel. He felt kind of bad for getting the kid to lie to everyone, but at the same time he was grateful for it. He wasn’t ready to step out of his witness protection just yet.

Another night full of nightmares left both archangel and hunter stressed and tired in their own ways come morning. They’d gone back to Gabriel’s for the night, against Dean’s protests, because it was where Sam felt safe. Yet again, Sam spent the first part of the night curled up under the bed instead of on it. The small shelter that space offered seemed to soothe him. If Gabriel happened to make the carpet a bit softer, well, that was his choice, wasn’t it? He _liked_ soft things. The fact that Sam did too was just a bonus. If he was going to be laying down there with the Winchester than he wanted to at least be comfortable what he did it. That was what he told himself, at least.

All in all, it wasn’t a good day or night, but it wasn’t bad, either. Not as bad as it could’ve been. Gabriel counted it a victory. He counted it as even more of one when they showed up at Bobby’s in the morning and he actually managed to get Sam to eat a little bit of breakfast there with the hunters at the table. He did it pressed up against Gabriel’s side, eyes darting over everyone like some feral animal who was waiting to see if someone was going to take his food away, but the point was that he ate it. Gabriel was thrilled by it and it was easy to see the others were as well.

Naturally, that was when everything had to go to shit.

They were done with breakfast and had coaxed Sam outside to try and get him into fresh air and maybe begin to work a little on his powers. Gabriel needed to try and see how much control he could teach him. It was as they were settling down onto a bit of grass in the backyard when Gabriel felt it, seconds too late to do anything about it. He only had enough time to shove back up to his feet, instinctively moving protectively in front of Sam, before four angels landed in the backyard.

Dean and Bobby leapt up as well, already reaching for weapons, and Sam curled in on himself tight, the pained whimper he made as he pressed against the back of Gabriel’s legs a sound that only fueled Gabriel’s anger. He reached one hand down, pressing it over Sam’s head and through his hair, and he kept his other hand free.

They’d come prepared, these angels. There was no way Gabriel could simply grab the others and run without giving away who he was. No pagan god would stand a chance against four angels – especially not when one of them was Uriel. Dick though he was, he was dangerous and he was good at what he did. He was the only reason they’d managed to get here without Gabriel sensing them until it was too late. He cursed himself for being stupid enough to not take the boys back to his place to hide while they healed Sam. They never should’ve stayed here.

Gabriel braced himself and tried to figure out a way to get the hell out of this without everything blowing up in their faces.


	9. Chapter 9

Years of practice helped Gabriel keep from drawing his angel blade from the depths of his grace. That instinct had taken a long time to be able to overcome. Now, faced off with four angels, it was even harder. How the hell had they known to come here? Better yet, why so fast? They should’ve had days before angels began to wonder who was shielding the Winchesters and why. What had sparked this? Sam had only been like this for two days now!

From off to the side, there was a low growl that came from Dean. “ _You_!” He snarled out. A quick look showed his glare was directed right at Uriel. Then, idiot that he was, he pushed forward right up to Gabriel’s side and puffed up like the absolute moron Gabriel knew he was. Seriously? Glaring and challenging at angels who could make his life a living hell? Did all Winchesters have no self-preservation skills?

Dean’s lip curled up as he looked over the others, two lower class angels whose names Gabriel couldn’t remember, and then up to Uriel and the one next to him, the one that Gabriel could see Dean was both happy and not to see – Castiel. “What’re you guys doing here, Cas?”

“They’re here for me, bucko.” Gabriel interjected. The trickster grin came out full force, sharp and mocking and made to annoy. No pagan worth their salt would cower before angels. He grinned and arched one eyebrow in that look he’d perfected that never failed to annoy. “Aint that right, boys? Someone upstairs got a little mad that someone else was playing with their toys.” Inside, his mind was racing furiously to try and figure out what he was going to do here. How was he going to get them out of this without giving himself away?

Power was almost rolling off of Uriel in waves. If Gabriel had been a lesser angel, or even actually the pagan he was pretending to be, he might’ve been intimidated. He wouldn’t have shown it, of course, but he might’ve felt it. As it was, though, all he felt was annoyance. Uriel’s power was _nothing_ compared to his. And Dad help him, if the idiot tried to pull anything, if he tried to harm this little group that Gabriel stood protectively near, he couldn’t guarantee that he could stop himself from drawing an angel blade that hadn’t seen the light of day in millennia.

“You interfere where you don’t belong, _pagan_.” Uriel said flatly. The way he said pagan was the same way someone would speak about dog shit on the bottom of their shoe. It had Gabriel bristling.

Beside him, Castiel stepped forward just enough to draw Dean’s attention. Those bright blue eyes of his fixed on the hunter in a way that Gabriel found both amusing and interesting. _Oh ho! So that’s how it is, hm?_

“Dean.” Castiel’s voice was a deep rumble that seemed so at odds with his vessel and yet perfectly fit his true form. “I don’t know what this pagan has told you or why he is here with you, but you cannot trust him. His kind lie as they breathe. He is not telling you everything.”

“And you are?” Gabriel shot back. He couldn’t help it; maybe he should keep quiet but his temper was getting the better of him. It might’ve had something to do with the kid he could feel trembling against his leg. The only thing that had kept Sam from running the same way he had last time he’d encountered Castiel was that Gabriel was keeping him here. He might’ve had the grace of archangels in him – that didn’t mean he knew how to use it. Gabriel knew how to use his and he kept Sam there with him. If he let him run, there was no telling where Sam would end up, and there was every chance one of the angels would be able to follow him. Best to keep him here where Gabriel could be sure he could keep him safe. He wouldn’t let angels hurt him again.

Castiel fixed him with an intense stare that Gabriel could remember seeing on a tiny little fledgling so long ago. “I will protect these boys from whatever game you intend to play on them.”

Shaking his head, Gabriel looked at him with pity. Poor, clueless little seraph. “You think I’m the only one playing games here, angel boy? It’s almost sad how little they tell you.”

“We are not here to argue with you.” Uriel cut in firmly. He shifted and his angel blade slipped down into his hand. Just barely did Gabriel keep from snorting. He watched with eyebrows raised as Uriel braced himself and his wings openly telegraphed what he was about to do. “They are not yours to play with and we will not allow your interference.”

There were only two things that Gabriel could see that he could do here. Only two choices that had been available to him from the instant the angels had landed here. He could run – or he could fight. A week ago, the answer would’ve been an easy one. Hell, he wouldn’t have even been here to begin with. A week ago, he would’ve been looking out for number one, just the way he had for a long, long time now, and cursing the idiots who were slowly screwing over the world.

A week ago he hadn’t known Sam. Not this Sam.

He hadn’t known the amazing soul that had sacrificed himself for the world and almost been destroyed in the process. One tiny little human, one absolutely incredible soul, had done something that shouldn’t have been possible. He’d bucked destiny, sending a giant ‘fuck you’ to the cosmos, and he’d stopped the apocalypse by giving everything that he had to give, without any hope for redemption. He’d done it without thought for his own safety or the hope that one day he’d be free. Best as Gabriel could see, he’d done it knowing full well that he was signing himself over to an eternity of torture.

This one human had done all that. And in this moment, standing protectively over him, how was Gabriel supposed to give anything less to keep him safe?

When Uriel launched forward, he was met sword for sword by Gabriel.

He watched Uriel’s eyes widen in realization as the grace that Gabriel kept so hidden leaked out into his vessel and flashed in his eyes. “You’re wrong.” The archangel swore. “Sam Winchester is _mine_.” The words rang with the power of his claim, both archangel and pagan. Then Gabriel twisted his wrist and shoved, knocking Uriel back. By all rights he should’ve stopped right there. He should’ve moved away now that he knew that Gabriel was an archangel. The others were already backing away. But Uriel was sneering and full of the same pride that Gabriel had once seen in him and warned Michael about. With a snap of his wings he launched himself towards Gabriel once more.

When Gabriel had left Heaven, he’d sworn to never again fight his brothers, not unless he had to. That didn’t mean that he’d forgotten how. He had no issue meeting Uriel blow for blow. A bit of grace held the other three angels frozen and allowed only Gabriel and Uriel to battle. Their blades clashed and Uriel snarled, low and hard. “You would fight your own family, for _them_? For _him_?” He shoved Gabriel back and the archangel stumbled slightly as he tried to keep the humans sheltered behind him. It was enough of an edge for Uriel. His eyes lit up with grace and he lunged forward.

Only, someone else got there first.

Gabriel looked in stunned disbelief at the figure that was on one knee on the ground in front of him. Sam knelt there looking beyond terrified and yet at the same time furious, his hand curled around an angel blade that was imbedded in Uriel, curved up towards his chest. Uriel stared down with wide eyed shock as the young Winchester jerked his blade up and the backyard was suddenly lit with the bright light of grace.

Inside, a part of Gabriel was screaming questions and worries and fears. He wanted to know how the hell Sam had done that, where he’d gotten an angel blade from, or what on earth had possessed him to do this?

But there was no time for Gabriel to freeze up or indulge the shock that was ringing in his grace. He had to take advantage of the stunned silence that was around them as Uriel crumpled to the ground. They needed to move – fast. Angels would’ve been watching and there was no telling how many of them were going to come now that Uriel was dead. Gabriel clasped Sam’s shoulder with one hand and lifted his other to snap, taking him, Sam, Dean and Bobby all out of there and to one of his many safe houses.

Almost the instant they landed, Sam was moving. The angel blade dropped out of his hand and his whole body was curling forward.

Gabriel ignored the cursing from the other two men. He ignored pretty much everything about them, really. Instead, he dropped down beside Sam, already reaching for the hands the hunter had curled into his hair. It took his angelic strength to be able to pull them back and stop the way he’d been scratching at himself. “Sam, Sammy, it’s okay. You’re okay.” Gabriel pulled him in close and wrapped his arms around him as Sam trembled.

“ _I am sorry_!” The words poured past Sam’s lips in rather flawless Enochian. “ _Please, Gabriel, please! I am sorry!”_

The fear and pain there had Gabriel wincing. “Oh, kiddo… _It will be okay, Samuel. You are fine. Your family is fine. Quiet now, little one. We are safe._ ”

“What the hell is going on?” Dean demanded loudly.

In immediate response, Sam whimpered and shoved further into Gabriel’s arms. The archangel responded without thinking by curling his still exposed wings around his little human. The two men standing to the side couldn’t see them, of course, but he wasn’t surprised that Sam seemed able to. He was, however, surprised to see just how much their presence relaxed him. The tremors faded away and Sam turned himself in Gabriel’s embrace until he could press his face against his chest. “ _I am sorry_ ,” He repeated, the formal words sounding so strange coming from his lips. “ _He was going to hurt you. I could not let them hurt you. I am so sorry. I didn’t want to kill your brother. I didn’t. I could not let them hurt you. Not you, Gabriel._ ”

Gabriel let his eyes close and his arms tightened around Sam, dragging him in closer. He bent down and buried his face against the hunter’s hair. _Oh, Sam._

Off to the side he could hear as Bobby pulled Dean back from them. “Give him a minute!” The older hunter warned lowly. “Open your eyes and actually look at em, Dean! He’s the only thing holding your brother together. You really wanna get in there and rip that apart just cause you’re _feelings are hurt_?”

“My…! Bobby! I want some damn _answers_!”

“And you’ll get em.” Gabriel said, never raising his head from Sam’s hair. He opened his eyes just enough to be able to glare over at Dean. “As soon as I’m sure your brother’s already fragile head isn’t going to break apart even more. He takes precedence over you, bucko. Every damn time.”

Gabriel closed his eyes again and went back to soothing his hunter. Let Bobby handle Dean. The old man had experience dealing with these two. He could handle Dean’s stupidity and Gabriel could handle Sam.

Holding on to Sam was almost distraction enough for Gabriel to forget that he’d just revealed himself to his family. The angels he’d left alive back there would fly off and let everyone know that they’d seen Gabriel. In no time, word would spread that he was alive – and that he was protecting the Winchesters. _I kept out of it all this time without choosing sides. And now…_ He tilted his head just enough to look down at the face that was pressed against his chest. There wasn’t much that he could see with how closely Sam was pressed to him. Sighing, Gabriel stroked some of Sam’s hair back from his face and then bent again to rest his cheek against the crown of Sam’s head.

It took almost ten minutes for Sam to calm down. Finally, though, his body and his grace-soul were both calm. Or, as calm as they ever were for him.

Shifting around a little, Gabriel adjusted his seat on the carpet and drew Sam right up into his lap. They probably looked ridiculous to the other two. Gabriel didn’t care. He held Sam in his lap and kept a grip on him, wings still curled around the hunter protectively. “We seem to be spending an awful lot of time on the floor.” He grumbled lowly, shaking his head. Then he looked up, only to find that Bobby had somehow managed to at least drag Dean over to the couch and sit them both down. They were close enough that Gabriel didn’t have to move to talk to them. “So,” He finally drawled out. _This ought to be fun._ “You guys probably have a few questions.”

“You think?” Dean said furiously.

“Let’s see if I can save you some time. Maybe then I won’t have you freaking your brother out more with all your shouting and growling.” He rubbed a hand up and down Sam’s bicep, feeling where it had started to shake already at Dean’s angry voice. He saw the hunter flinch and knew his barb had sunk in there. Satisfied with that, he nodded. “Right. So, obviously I’m not just a trickster. There’s no real hiding anymore. By now, pretty much the whole Host of Heaven is gonna know that I’m not dead. I ran out a long, long time ago to get away from the fighting. Guess I don’t really have a choice now.” They’d make him join one way or another. But he’d be damned if he was going to join Michael’s side. Gabriel may have thrown his lot in, but it wasn’t with Michael or Lucifer – it was with humans. With _this_ human.

Abruptly changing his expression to a grin, he smirked at them. “Consider me your newest member on the anti-apocalypse team.”

“So you’re really Gabriel.” Bobby said slowly. He looked – stunned. Not that Gabriel could blame them. He doubted the others had really showed themselves as anything that great. Really, Gabriel was as far from your typical angel as possible, let alone a typical archangel. Bobby was watching him with both wariness and curiosity. “I heard him call you that – Gabriel. You’re actually an archangel who, what? Played as a trickster while hiding out from your family’s fighting?”

That was a pretty decent summary. “Yeah. I didn’t really want to be found. So… well, where better to hide than the pagans? Wasn’t that hard to set myself up as Loki.”

“Are you actually Loki or did you take his place?”

The question made Gabriel grin. He really did like how Bobby’s mind worked. He liked how he actually asked questions and wanted to know the answers, instead of just shouting at him all the time like the furious Winchester beside him so obviously wanted to do. Gabriel couldn’t resist winking at Dean just to watch his blood pressure rise a little more. Laughing, Gabriel shook his head. “Nope, no other Loki’s out there. It was all me, gramps. I never expected him to take off so well, though. Didn’t think I’d get my own backstory written in and everything.” Not that they managed to get things right. They gave Loki parents and such; parents who didn’t actually exist. They gave him a lot in his story that wasn’t quite true. But he’d never protested it.

A sudden ringing in Gabriel’s grace warned him that someone had touched his wards. He cursed lowly and then he was moving quickly, straightening up with Sam in his arms. The hunter didn’t even fight it; he let Gabriel scoop him up bridal style and just curled himself in a little closer.

Bobby and Dean both pushed up, tense and ready for trouble the instant they saw Gabriel moving and heard him swearing. “What is it?” Dean demanded. His annoyance with Gabriel was forgotten in the face of the trouble that might be coming.

Striding forward, Gabriel took Sam over to the couch. “Someone’s testing my wards.” He told them as he set Sam down. Putting the hunter in the corner, he pressed a hand against Sam’s face, tipping him up until Sam was looking at him with those wide, scared eyes of his. “ _Samuel, I need to check this place to make sure it is secure. I know that you are scared and that you believe you are in danger, but I need you to trust me. Can you trust me?_ ”

Later, he would think about how much it made his grace dance happily when Sam didn’t even hesitate to nod at him.

“ _Good_.” Gabriel said, voice a bit thick. “ _I need you to stay here. Trust me that you are safe. And trust me that these two with you will not harm you. I swear that to you. They will not harm you and they will help to keep you safe._ ”

Sam looked confused by that, eyes darting to the other two and then back to Gabriel. But he nodded again.

There would be more time to reassure him later. Gabriel leaned in and kissed Sam’s forehead. Then he straightened back up and moved quickly to the bit of floor where Sam had dropped his angel blade. _His angel blade. How much is that grace a part of Sam’s soul now that he can make an angel blade! Is it… actually his?_ Those questions pushed at the inside of Gabriel’s mind and he shoved them quickly down. He picked up the angel blade and held it hilt out towards Dean, who looked surprised yet still took it. “Don’t let anyone take him.” Gabriel warned them. “Try not to kill my brothers if you don’t have to, please, but if it’s them or Sam…”

He trailed off, but Dean nodded. To him, Sam won out every time against anyone.

It kind of scared Gabriel just how much he found himself feeling the same.

Before anything else could happen, Gabriel manifested his own blade, curling his hand tightly around the hilt. Then he focused on where the touch to his wards was coming from. He found it easily. Then, with just a thought, he set off to see who had found him – and find out how they’d managed to do it.


	10. Chapter 10

Sam stayed where Gabriel had put him. It seemed the safest and smartest way to go. He’d put Sam here to keep him safe and had told him that he could trust these two. It seemed strange to think about trusting, well, anyone. They weren’t angels like Lucifer and Michael and Gabriel. They weren’t _real_. Why should Sam trust them? Anyone that wasn’t an actual angel in here had always been the one to hurt him. Was Gabriel confused and maybe thought that this was…was real?

Or…

Maybe Gabriel was in control of this dream. That had Sam sitting up just a little straighter. As best as he understood, torture-dreams were created by the Cage and played out in Sam’s own mind. It would make sense that Gabriel could manipulate something like that. He was pretty damn talented at creating illusions and alternate realities. What if he’d stepped in here with Sam and taken over the torture-dream and turned it into something else? It would explain why no one was acting the way that Sam expected them to. And why Gabriel said that he could trust them.

But, if that were true, why had angels attacked them? Why had they tried to hurt _Gabriel_?

Sam chewed on his lip as he tried to figure it out. It came to him after a moment and he felt stupid for not realizing it sooner. Of course the Cage would try and take Sam’s mind back. It made perfect sense that it would be fighting against him. And Gabriel was strong, of course he was strong, but the Cage was made to hold an archangel. Probably the only reason Gabriel was able to manipulate things as much as he did was because the Cage was meant to hold _one_ archangel, not three, and that must grant him a bit of power. As an archangel/trickster, he’d be perfect at finding little loopholes and manipulating them.

A shudder ran down Sam and he wanted to sigh into the couch out of sheer relief. This…this was so much better than he’d ever thought! Gabriel would win – Sam had no doubt about that. And Sam would help him. He could help to keep him safe like he had before. Then maybe they could stay here in this little bit of fake reality that the trickster had made for him. Maybe, for a little while, Sam could enjoy the pretense that he was safe.

The only thing that would make it better would be for Michael and Lucifer to be here. Sam really wanted to be wrapped up in Lucifer’s wings like Gabriel had just done for him before he left. Lucifer made him feel safe and cared for just the way that Dean had when he was a child.

Sam was caught up in those thoughts when Gabriel finally reappeared in the room – only, he wasn’t alone.

Immediately Sam tensed. His eyes went wide as he looked at Castiel, who was staring right back at him. There was no hesitation on Gabriel’s part to come straight for Sam. When it looked like Dean might stand in his way, which Sam didn’t understand, the archangel just rolled his eyes and vanished, reappearing right at Sam’s side. The young hunter didn’t even jump. He reached out without hesitation and was more than happy when Gabriel caught his hand and held it tightly. “ _Everything is all right, Samuel_.” He murmured to Sam in Enochian. “ _My brother will not harm you._ ”

Sam snuck a look over at him and then back to Gabriel, not quite able to keep from watching the seraph carefully. There was… there was grace in him, but it was, different. Different than what Sam remembered seeing the last time he saw Castiel. For a second Sam chewed on his lip. Then, not noticing the stunned way that everyone but Gabriel turned to look at him, he whispered “ _Is it really him_?”

For some reason, his question made Gabriel beam at him. “ _It is._ ”

“ _He is… not right._ ”

This time surprise lit Gabriel’s face. “ _What do you mean_?” Now he was looking at Castiel as well, a little more cautiously than before. Castiel, for his part, hadn’t moved once. He was watching them with a stunned feel coming off him.

“What’s going on?” Dean asked, looking back and forth between them.

Sam flinched back from how annoyed Dean sounded before he remembered these were just constructs Gabriel had created. Dreams still, but not like in the torture-dreams. That let him relax a little. “ _I… remember. I think_.” The memories were hazy. Lots of things were hazy. “ _When he pulled my body out. His grace was brighter. Not like this._ ”

“ _Your body was taken without your soul inside?_ ” Gabriel sounded horrified by it.

Lucifer and Michael had been as well. They’d explained to Sam that it wasn’t Castiel’s fault, he couldn’t be blamed for it, but they were horrified at the idea that Sam’s body had been topside without a soul inside

“He truly is from your future.” Castiel said suddenly. His voice was noise just as much as everyone else’s, but the rough and deep sound of it was also familiar.

Bobby shifted himself so that he was a little closer to Sam, and between him and the angel. He looked at Gabriel, though. “What’s Feathers doing here? I thought we were hiding from angels, not bringing em on in.”

“Castiel won’t harm us.” Gabriel said. Whatever he was telling them, he sounded sure about it. His thumb started to stroke soothingly against the inside of Sam’s wrist. “He’s a little rebel at heart, aren’t ya, Cassie? Can’t risk anything happening to his precious little Deano over here. An I extracted a few promises before I brought him inside. Trust me, there’s no way he’d break them. We’re safe.” Looking at Sam, he added in Enochian “ _You are safe_.”

Of course he was. This was all of Gabriel’s making, right? “ _I know_.”

He could see both pleasure and surprise at his words. Sam was just sort of pleased to be speaking again. It felt… good. Not as terrifying as he’d first believed. Enochian was safe. Though Sam sort of wished he could remember enough of English to at least understand this construct of his brother. Why didn’t Gabriel make them speak Enochian as well? Then they could all talk. Sam could pretend, at least for a little while. Though maybe that right there was the reason they didn’t. Maybe Gabriel didn’t want him to forget too much. That could be dangerous.

“How is he functioning?” Castiel’s voice sounded confused. “He is a mix of soul and grace that is only partially fused together. What bits of his soul that are still human are irrevocably damaged. He should not be awake, let alone capable of speech.”

Gabriel scowled over at the angel. “Geeze, Cassie. Just throw it all right out there.”

It looked like Dean was getting beyond fed up with everything. That was a look Sam remembered. Dean only wore it when he was beyond annoyed and was about to start demanding answers. “I don’t know what the hell is going on here, but someone better start answering questions. You,” He spun towards Gabriel and glared down at him, pointing with the blade in his hand. “Have a helluva lot of explaining to do!”

The sight of the blade Sam had used to stab the other angel now being pointed at Gabriel made the young hunter sick. He didn’t want that. He didn’t want to see his blade – _My blade? Since when do I have a blade? –_ turned Gabriel’s way. He was surprised a second later when it vanished from Dean’s hand and reappeared in his own. Sam drew it in and tucked it close against his body. He ignored the weird looks he got and just turned his face in towards Gabriel. It wasn’t hard to shift down the couch enough to rest his cheek against Gabriel’s shoulder.

The archangel made one of his happy-sounds that shook through his chest. “I’m thinking someone doesn’t like it when you point sharp things at me, sunshine.” He lifted one arm, slipping it around Sam, and drew him in a little closer. “An I already told you what’s going on. It’s not my fault you’re not listening. Everything’s still the same as it was before. Sam’s still broken, I’m still going to help him. The only differences now are that you know who I am and you know I’m a bit more equipped to help him than you realized. And we’re in a bit more danger than before.”

“Ya think?” Bobby asked, voice dry.

“Oh, it’s worse than you realize, Singer.” Gabriel said. He brought one hand up, soothingly stroking it over Sam’s hair, and the gentle touch had the hunter sighing happily. “Cassie here may have come after us because of his special little link with Winchester One over here, but the other angels there most definitely went back home and told Mikey all about me. That means that Heaven knows I’m alive and I’ve got you guys under my protection, an they know that there’s something different about Sam. They’ll be hunting for you guys even more than they were before, cause we’re messing up their apocalypse plans. They want Sam broken – they want him so broken he’ll take down Lilith for them and break the final seal so Lucy can walk free. If they find Sam like this, there’s every chance they could try and break him even more until there’s nothing left but what they want. Or they could try and work some mojo to send him back to his time and bring back _your_ Sammy.”

Whatever Gabriel was saying had Dean standing up a little straighter. “Can they do that?”

Dean’s words had Gabriel going very, very still against Sam. The young hunter froze, unsure. The emotions in the air became charged and he wished he understood what was going on. It felt important. It felt huge.

He watched as Gabriel lifted his eyes to Dean and they sparked with the grace and other power inside. “You really wanna send your brother back to a future in the Cage just so you can have your Sammy back, Winchester? You want to assign him to an eternity of torture so you can have your precious little unbroken Sammy?”

The room went quiet and Sam stared back and forth between everyone, wondering what was going on and what was going to happen. What was going on?

* * *

Gabriel was seething. He’d seen the hope in Dean the minute he’d heard of the possibility of getting his own Sam back. There was a part of Gabriel that couldn’t really blame him for wanting back the brother that he _knew_. The one who wasn’t broken – who was still human and free of torture. That part of Gabriel was overshadowed by the larger part that was absolutely furious at the idea that anyone would willingly send his Winchester back to that. He’d claimed Sam as his; not just to himself, but to the angels. He’d stood up and staked a claim and made damn sure there was no escaping this fight for him anymore. He wasn’t going to let anyone or anything cause any harm to the man who was trembling in his arms.

It only cooled his temper a little when he saw the instant regret flash over Dean’s face. The thought of getting his brother back had been a fleeting one. A hope to maybe have Sammy okay again. “Of course not.” He said, voice firming a little. “I’m not gonna send my brother back to Hell. I just…”

“You just, what? Don’t want to have to deal with how broken he is? Is it too much trouble for you?”

“I didn’t say that!” Dean snapped.

Bobby reached out, putting a hand on Dean’s arm and pulling him back a little. “Let’s all cool our jets here. We’re not switching out the new Sam for the old one an we’re not giving up on him. We got bigger things to worry about than bitchin’ at each other right now. First things first, we gotta make sure we’re safe. Can they get to us here?”

“No.” Gabriel said confidently. He gestured lazily with one hand towards Castiel. “The only reason _he_ did is cause he’s the one that pulled Deano here out of Hell and rebuilt him. That little handprint you’ve got gives you guys a nice, neat little connection.” He’d been amused as hell to see that. It wasn’t a full-fledged bond, not yet, but it definitely marked Dean and connected them, and Gabriel bet Michael hadn’t been happy about that one. Winking at Castiel, he added “Way to get a little grabby there, bro.”

Dean looked flustered, but Bobby still had his serious face on, and his questions weren’t done. “You’re sure we can trust him? Cause before, it sure sounded like you were saying we couldn’t trust any angels.”

Sighing, Gabriel tried to think about how to put this. He played absently with Sam’s hand, thumb stroking over his pulse point. The poor kid was probably so lost right now. Gabriel couldn’t take the time to run two conversations, though. He needed to get one group under control. Then he’d deal with Sam. Hopefully he could handle waiting. “Cassie was manipulated almost as much as you bozos were. Trust me, we’ll be having a talk about it once you guys go down for the night. But like I told you before, I didn’t let him in without extracting some promises – and promises to an archangel hold a hell of a lot of power. He won’t be betraying us. And he won’t be leaving until I’m absolutely sure he’s on our side.” He added a sharp look to the silent Castiel at that, making absolutely clear of his words. Castiel just nodded. He was still quiet, unsure and maybe just a bit too much in awe over a brother he hadn’t expected to see and one who he’d been trained his entire existence to listen to. Lesser angels were almost programmed to listen to archangels.

Bobby apparently took him at his word, which was a nice change from Dean’s skepticism. Of course, Gabriel hadn’t figured out _why_ Bobby was trusting him so much, but he wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth. “Well if we’re safe and hidden, it don’t seem like our plans have changed all that much.” The older hunter said simply. “We work on getting Sam back towards normal again an we try an figure out how to stop all this shit from happening just like we were doing before.”

The resilience of humans never failed to amaze Gabriel. He’d expected a lot more fighting. A lot more swearing and arguments and all around trouble. Yet here Bobby was just rolling with the punches and adapting to their circumstances with a whole lot more grace than Gabriel had expected. He would’ve understood more fighting, even if he’d been annoyed by it. He’d been prepared for it. This easy acquiescence was good even if it set him on edge a little. Nothing was ever this simple.

Sam made some soft sound against his shoulder and pressed in a little closer, seeking out safety, and Gabriel tightened his hold just the slightest bit. No, nothing was ever simple. But he was beginning to think that sometimes there were things that were very much worth it.

* * *

Until they were all sure of Castiel, there wasn’t a lot they could talk about in front of him. Gabriel was only going to trust him with so much information for now. He wasn’t going to put these people at risk if he ended up being wrong about Castiel’s trustworthiness. But he had a feeling he wasn’t wrong. The way that Castiel looked at Dean, and the way that Dean looked back at him, showed more than just a little connection between them. More than once the two ended up staring at one another in a way that made Gabriel roll his eyes. Dad above, was he really going to have to deal with ridiculous sexual tension between these two on top of everything else? At one point he couldn’t help switching to Enochian to murmur to Sam, keeping his voice low so Castiel wouldn’t hear. “ _Please tell me these two go their act together and finally admitted their feelings for one another._ ”

The smile he’d gotten in response to that question had been the brightest one that he’d seen so far. Not large, still just barely there, yet compared to the fear that usually sat on Sam’s face it just made it seem all the brighter. Sam had shaken his head. Gabriel resolved to do something about that. He wasn’t going to sit around and watch them pine for one another. Once he dealt with Castiel and helped him get his head screwed on straight, he’d see what he could do about giving him a nudge towards his hunter.

Eventually, Sam’s exhaustion won out and he felt asleep yet again with his head in Gabriel’s lap. He slept better when they were touching. After that, it wasn’t hard to nudge the other hunters off towards the rooms he snapped up for them. Only when they were finally shut away did the archangel turn his attention to the last remaining member of the room. “Sit down, Castiel.”

Castiel took a seat in a nearby chair. Seeing him perched so awkwardly there had Gabriel snorting and shaking his head. Kid wasn’t used to being in his vessel, that was obvious.

Bright blue eyes moved down to look where Sam was resting and there was something in that look that had Gabriel wanting to pull his wings out. He resisted, but he couldn’t stop how his voice sharpened a little. “Remember your promises, bro. I won’t let you hurt anyone here.”

Those eyes snapped up to Gabriel’s face. “I will not hurt anyone, brother.”

“But…?”

For a second Castiel was quiet. His eyes drifted back down to Sam and, though his vessel didn’t show it, his wings showed his confusion. “I do not understand why you protect him so. What he is… he is not human. Even more so than he was before. The stain of demon blood may be gone somehow, but the mix of grace and soul marks him as even more of an abomination. Is he truly even Sam Winchester anymore, or is he something sent back to destroy us?”

Gabriel couldn’t stop the bitter sounding laugh that bubbled up. “Destroy us?” He smoothed his hand over Sam’s hair and brushed it back from his face. Even in sleep, the kid didn’t lose his tension, the fear stamped on his face. “Look at him, Cas. Really look at him. Does he look like he could hurt anyone?”

“He killed Uriel.”

“Because Uriel was going to hurt me. Sam protected the one person he feels safest around right now. That doesn’t exactly mark him as bad, kiddo.” Hardening his voice once more, Gabriel added on, “And if you call him an abomination again, you’ll find yourself living here without a voice. Whatever’s wrong with him, whatever’s been done, it hasn’t been his fault. Not even the demon blood was his fault.”

“He drank it willingly with Ruby.” Castiel pointed out.

“Yeah, cause you guys had nothing to do with that.” Snorting, Gabriel shook his head again. “You guys have been trying to push them apart and get Sammy closer to breaking that last seal. I know you’re not stupid, Cas. I know you can see what’s going on. Michael wants this fight. No one’s actually trying to stop it. They’re pushing and pushing these boys until they break apart. And you’re helping them along like a good little seraph. But I know you, I remember you. You always had questions. I doubt that’s changed now. You had to have questioned what they were doing or why.” When Castiel said nothing, simply sat there, it was as clear of an answer as any words would’ve been. Gabriel’s lips quirked up. “You’ve already begun rebelling. Because of that human back there, you’ve been questioning, and they aren’t happy about it, are they?”

“I have been… reminded of my place.” Castiel said slowly.

Yeah, he could imagine that. Gabriel knew how they did things like that. “I know there’s a part of you that knows this isn’t right. Even with their ‘retraining’, there’s a part of you that’s connected to Dean, an that part of you knows that this whole thing is wrong. Dad doesn’t want the apocalypse right now.”

Castiel sat up straighter and his wings lifted up in open shock. “You’ve spoken with Him?”

“No.” That almost made him snort again. “No one’s spoken with Daddy in a long, long time, kiddo. But don’t you think if He wanted this, He would’ve had me sounding my Horn? Don’t you think He would’ve had His messenger out spreading the word? Kind of my job. Just because none of you knew where I was doesn’t mean that He didn’t. He would’ve told me. Telling stuff like that, it’s kind of in the job description.” He lifted one hand and swirled it around his face. “Dad’s Messenger.”

He could tell that he’d given Castiel a lot to think about. Between the fight at Bobby’s place, his warnings and such when Castiel had followed his bond here, and then all of this. It was a lot and it needed a chance to sink in. Some things only started to make sense when give the time to process, even for angels. Shifting himself a little on the couch, Gabriel very carefully began to shift Sam and gather him up in his arms. Carrying the moose was nothing for him. “I’ll give you time to think about what I said. Relax, meditate, whatever it is you need to do to get this all figured out. Just, don’t try and leave, kid. No one’s getting in or out right now and I don’t wanna have to come ground you if you make any attempts. I’m gonna take my Winchester back to bed so he can try and get some kind of rest.”

“Do they realize what it means for you to have claimed him?”

The question was surprising, though it really shouldn’t have been. Gabriel stopped with Sam cradled in his arms, standing at the edge of the couch. He looked to Castiel, who was watching him with an unreadable expression. “No.” He finally said. “The other two would probably freak if they did, and there’s no telling how much Sam understands of things right now. Until today, he hasn’t exactly been talking.”

Castiel’s eyes ran over Sam and it warmed Gabriel and reassured him a little to see how the seraph softened. There was hope if he was feeling bad for Sam. “Our brothers did great damage to him in his timeline.”

“Yeah.” And Gabriel would be damned before he allowed it to happen all over again.

The house was quiet as he carried Sam back to the bedroom. He laid Sam down in the bed, running a hand over his forehead to try and smooth away the lines there. Already, the kid was starting to twitch, his dreams seeping in past whatever wards Gabriel tried to put up. He let himself get pulled down into the bed without any protest and curled himself around his human. A second later, he wrapped his wings around Sam. “The things you do to me, kid.” He murmured.

Curling tighter around him, arms, body and wings, he held Sam close and tried to figure out what they were going to do now. Heaven knew Gabriel was back – and they knew he had Sam. Their time to heal him wasn’t going to be as long as they’d hoped. Tomorrow, he was going to have to start pushing, maybe even reach down into the chaos that was the kid’s mind.

Closing his eyes, Gabriel did something that he hadn’t done in a long time, and he prayed to his Father to help make sure he didn’t break the boy who’d come to mean way too much to him.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is short, I know! But it didn't fit in with the next chapter - it worked better on its own. And it's necessary. Plus, I wanted to give you something, even if it wasn't much, and I've been so damn stuck on this first part LoL
> 
> I tried my best in the first part of this but I’m not used to writing Dean and Castiel so I’m sorry if they don’t seem all that great. I just, felt the need to try, and I felt this scene was needed to make the two feel more like characters and less like little accessories ;P

Sleep didn’t come easily that night for Dean. There was too much going on, too much in his head, for him to do more than toss and turn. Eventually he gave it up as a lost cause and made his way out of the bedroom and in search the kitchen. It didn’t take him long to find it. He had absolutely no qualms about making himself at home and seeing if the trickster had anything with which to make some coffee, and maybe something a bit stronger to pour into it.

What he hadn’t expected to find was a very still angel standing like a statue near one of the tall living room windows. It drew Dean up short for just the space of a heartbeat. Then he forced his body to relax. Up until a few days ago he would’ve counted this angel as someone on the very short list of people that he could trust. It still seemed hard to believe that Gabriel – Jesus, he could barely think of him as Gabriel and not _the trickster_ – was right when he said that Heaven was actually trying to _start_ the apocalypse instead of stop it. It hurt, in ways that Dean hadn’t been aware he could hurt after Hell, to think of Castiel betraying them. To think that he’d really been gunning for this the whole time instead of trying to stop it. And it hurt even more every single time he had to look at his terrified brother and was reminded of what could happen if their plan was to succeed. If they got what they wanted, was this his future? This broken down, terrified Sam, locked away in the Cage with Michael and Lucifer? It terrified Dean and he’d always turned his fear to anger. Much easier to deal with.

For a moment he contemplated ignoring Castiel. Why bother talking to him? Just because Gabe had decided to trust him didn’t mean that Dean was going to. Hell, he didn’t even trust Gabriel. Why trust someone that the trickster was saying was mostly safe?

But he couldn’t kick that part of him that _wanted_ to trust. The part that felt betrayed. It was that part that led Dean towards Castiel instead of in towards the kitchen.

Only, when he got close, he had no idea what to say.

In the end, he didn’t have to figure it out. He didn’t have to start the conversation. Castiel did it for him. He never looked away from the windows, but his voice was easy to hear in the still of the room. “You are angry with me.”

“You’re damn right I’m angry.” Dean fired back. But he didn’t keep yelling. He didn’t spit out the venom that sat on the tip of his tongue. Instead, he stood there, side by side, and fought to figure out the conflicting emotions that were jumping around inside of him.

Turning his head, Castiel looked at him with that calm, cool stare that some of the angels had, the one that reminded Dean these beings were far, far older than him. Then he turned back to the windows. When he spoke, his words were low, with an almost hesitant edge to them. Something in it sparked Dean to actually _listen_. “I am a soldier.” Castiel said lowly. “That is what I was trained to be. It’s who I am. I have fought many times for Heaven, believing myself to be working under our Father’s orders. Doing what He wanted. What He commanded. I’ve been taught from the moment of my creation not to question and to obey. Yet since I have come to earth, the very things I felt I knew all seem to be in question. Because of you.” He turned now to look at Dean and there was something so confused in his eyes. “What are you, to make me question an eternity of existence?”

Jesus. This was way too deep for him. Especially after a night of almost no sleep, and without any sort of coffee. “I’m just a person, Cas.” His words were calm. What happened to his earlier anger? Where had it gone? Mostly in that moment he just felt tired.

“You are more than that, Dean Winchester.” Castiel tilted his head in that way of his, like he was looking into Dean instead of at him. “You have stood against fate, time and time again, and walked away the victor. You aren’t afraid to question or to fight for what you believe is right. You are more than simply ‘just a person’.”

“I’m not.” Dean insisted. He shuffled back a step, not quite able to be still under that stare. It left him feeling like Castiel was seeing down into him and he didn’t want to think about what it was the angel saw. After hell, he doubted his soul was anything worth seeing. “Really, Cas, I’m not anything special. I’m just one guy. You make it sound like I’m doing something special, but I’m not. I’m just doing what I think is right. That’s all anyone can do.”

There was a sort of awe to Castiel’s expression that made Dean uncomfortable. This time the hunter was the one to turn and stare out the window in an attempt to cut off this awkward conversation before it could get any worse. In the same effort, he tried to change the subject and ended up blurting out the first thing that came to mind. “I still can’t believe that douche is actually Gabriel.”

It wasn’t until the words were out of his mouth that he thought maybe he could’ve worded that better. Not that he’d ever censored his opinion on angels before. But, this guy was an archangel, and Castiel seemed to think those things important. He doubled checked with Castiel to make sure he hadn’t bothered him by how he referred to someone who was his brother.

Castiel, however, didn’t look upset. There was a ghost of a smile curving the corners of his mouth and something of that hard light in his eyes softened. “It is a joy to find him alive. Even in the midst of everything, the Host is rejoicing. Their voices are beautiful as they pass the message of his return. He was most loved among the lesser angels.”

That hadn’t at all been what Dean was expecting. “Really?” That dickbag? It was hard to think of him as anything other than the trickster, the guy who had tortured Sam so bad the younger Winchester hadn’t even been able to talk about it all. He still couldn’t listen to Asia without flinching. And this guy was the _Archangel Gabriel_? The images just wouldn’t mesh in his mind.

“I understand that he’s shown a different side to you than what I know.” Castiel said. He moved so that he and Dean were shoulder to shoulder, the both of them looking together out the window, though Dean had a feeling they were both seeing different things. Castiel’s voice had gone softer in that way that happened when a person looked back on memories – fond memories. “The other archangels weren’t as quick to socialize with us. Michael is First, and as such he’s always been about power and control. Lucifer, before the fall, was bright and warm, but always with an edge that made many seraphs nervous. Raphael was more interested in his studies than anything else. But Gabriel… he was well loved. He spoke with us, cared for us. He was known for having a kind word for all. No one could be around him for long without smiling or laughing. Not that he was any less dangerous than the others. Sometimes, in fact, he was more so. He delivered our Father’s messages, both kind and harsh.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard the stories.”

There was a moment of quiet. Castiel drew himself up and Dean got the impression that, if he were human, he would’ve been ducking his head down, his shoulders up to his ears. Everything about him showed his discomfort. “What is it, Cas?”

“I am, unsure of how to be around him.” Castiel admitted carefully. “He is my brother, one whom I once loved and trusted, yet he ran away and left us there. Even still, something in me trusts him more than I trust those back home. His words carry a ring of truth that theirs do not. How do I know what is right, or who to trust?”

It took everything Dean had not to just shout out at him about how damn simple that answer was. He could’ve told Castiel who to trust here, even if it would’ve been strange to say. He could’ve told him how much the other angels were screwing with him, or that he needed to grow the hell up and learn to start making his own decisions and not just blindly follow everyone else. But something in those words touched on a place inside of him and he couldn’t get them past his lips. He’d done the same thing as Castiel once – he’d followed blindly where maybe he should’ve questioned. And he’d had a brother he loved more than anything else who had run away.

Dean drew in a deep breath and blew it back out slowly. “I can’t tell you what choices to make, Cas.” No matter how much he may want to. “This is something you’ve got to figure out yourself. All I can tell you is that we’re here for you, if you need us. I’m sure you’ll come to the right decision in the end.”

“Thank you, Dean.” Castiel said lowly. His voice was thicker, as if something were clogging his throat.

Neither man said a word as they stared out the window, but the tension that had been there since Castiel’s arrival yesterday was finally starting to fade away. Quiet, they stayed there together for quite a while, simply watching as the morning began.

* * *

Things weren’t quite as peaceful in other parts of the house. The nightmares were getting worse for Sam, fighting harder and harder to get free in his head, and it scared the hell out of Gabriel. They were hurting Sam, making him worse, and no amount of grace seemed to chase it away completely. As Gabriel watched through the night and saw his hunter thrash and cry and whimper, as he watched the fractures growing larger and larger in an already damaged soul – faster than the grace in him was able to repair – he knew he was running out of options.

He couldn't always tell what it was that Sam was dreaming about. The younger Winchester's grace protected him from too much instinctive intrusion. Not to mention Gabriel tried to keep back as much as possible while still trying to help. He didn't think his seeing things would do any good whatsoever. The only thing it would serve to do was break him a little more, maybe break the both of them a little more, and make him angry. Sam didn't need his anger.

But there was something different about this dream. Gabriel could feel it in the air. Whatever it was, it was bad. So much worse than any he'd had so far. It had Sam's grace-soul shuddering inside of him and crying out in pain on a level that no human would've been able to hear. Gabriel heard it, though. He heard it loud and clear. The sound of it echoed down through him and rang through his grace with an agony that had him wanting to cry out on Sam's behalf.

Dear Father, what was he dreaming about? What was happening to him in there?

Whatever it was, it was bad, and Gabriel watched with horror as Sam's grace-soul shoved at his body as if aching to break free, to run away from whatever was happening. It took a quick touch for Gabriel to shut it down. He had to tighten his hold over the hunter and curl his wings close just to keep him from trying to angel-out of his meatsuit.

A cry ripped from Sam and his whole body convulsed. The grace in him reacted as if a small earthquake shook the room.

Dammit! Gabriel sat up, looking down at the tortured body under him, and carefully tried to use his grace to soothe Sam’s. It didn’t work, though. The next shiver than ran over him caused not just their room but the _whole house_ to shake. They were out of time. Sam was getting worse and he wasn’t able to control the grace he carried in him. Instead, it was reacting to him, and the effects of that could be disastrous.

If Gabriel could’ve trusted Castiel, been able to be just the slightest bit confident in which way the kid would go, he would’ve called the seraph back for help. But as Gabriel watched Sam tighten underneath the onslaught of yet another memory, he knew that he couldn’t take the risk. Not right now. Not for what he was about to do.

Gabriel waved a hand towards his bedroom door and cast wards over the rom. He did it in just enough time, too. No sooner had he sealed the room than he heard someone trying the door knob. Upon finding it locked, they banged on the door. Gabriel ignored it.

All of his focus turned to the tumultuous soul inside Sam’s body. Gabriel rolled them so that Sam’s back was pressed down into the bed and the archangel was straddling his hips. His palms settled onto the front of Sam’s shoulders, fingers curving down and over, physically pinning him to the bed even as his body tried to convulse again. “I’m sorry, Sammy.” Gabriel said, pressing him down. He gathered up his grace and prepared to do the one thing he’d been terrified to do all this time.

With a deep breath, Gabriel reached into Sam’s broken mind and prayed he wasn’t about to destroy his hunter.


	12. Chapter 12

_Everywhere Gabriel looked there was blood and death. Pain screaming in white hot colors, ripping and tearing and breaking away at the fragile tissue of mind and soul. There was grace, bright and hot in some places and icy cold in others. It fought against the dark, against the horrors that ripped through the fragile lace. As quickly as damage was repaired, more was created, an endless cycle of pain and fear and soul-crushing agony that left the archangel aching._

_Even as he reached, he tried to help, to heal, patching up what he could even if he knew it was only going to break apart the minute he was gone._

_It was like diving into the midst of a hurricane. Everything was swirling and storming and it felt like there was no end in sight. This wasn’t what a human mind was supposed to be like. There should be peace. There should be_ something _. Not this great open space of horror and pain._

 _Stepping into someone’s mind and soul like this was never an easy thing – even for an archangel. To step into someone’s mind, to speak in their mindscape, that was one thing. But Gabriel had done so much more. His grace was bleeding through all of Sam in a way that shouldn’t be possible without a very clear “Yes” to let him. He was half inside the hunter, almost as if possessing him, and it was a maelstrom of too much and yet not enough, a taunting hint of what could be. There was a connection, angel to vessel, and Gabriel’s grace ached to make that sort of connection complete even if this vessel wasn’t_ his _true vessel._

_This shouldn’t be possible. There should be no way that he could go inside Sam like this. The amount of trust it implied, the instinctual permission that had to have been given, spoke of a bond he hadn’t thought possible. It glorified and humbled him in so many ways._

_Yet everywhere he looked, everywhere he went, he couldn’t seem to find the core of Sam. It was as if the part of him that actually made him who he was, was missing. Gabriel’s own fear grew as he channeled in more of himself, pouring more of his grace into his human, deeper and deeper, chasing it down with a part of him that was more instinctual than anything. He followed the ghost of a bond he’d created with his promise to help, a tie that bound him to Sam the minute he’d made his deal with Dean to offer his help and protection to the youngest Winchester, and he was awed by just how strong that bond actually was. It was so much more than it should’ve been. What created this?_

_Gabriel couldn’t afford time to think about it. As he dug deeper, diving past more horrors, more images, things that were enough to drive_ anyone _to the point of insanity, he caught a glimpse of something in the distance._

_The eye of the storm._

_With everything he had, Gabriel threw himself at that light – at Sam._

* * *

The breeze felt cool as it blew across the yard. Sam tilted his face up, letting his eyes drift closed as he enjoyed the play of the breeze over his face. It felt so nice here. So easy. The day was beautiful and sunny. Warm without getting too hot. Even the wind felt great.

Stretched out on the hood of one of the junkers in Bobby's lot, it was the kind of day that Sam had always loved.

He wasn't sure how long he'd been here. In some ways, he didn't really care. Everything felt so nice and peaceful in here. How long he’d been here didn’t matter. He sat here on the car in the sunshine and just let himself relax. He didn't think of before, of any of those dark things that he knew were waiting out there. He didn't try and wonder about any of it. All he knew, all he felt, was the peace.

It seemed sort of fitting that it didn't really last long.

A bright light lit Sam’s little world and he felt his lips curve up into a smile even as he turned his head to look at his visitor. It was surprising and yet not all at the same time to see Gabriel striding towards him between a row of cars. His smile stretched wider until his dimples show clearly in the easy sunlight. “Gabriel.”

“Sam!” The archangel hurried towards him and he looked both stunned and overjoyed to see him.

Sam pushed himself up a little and watched as his companion finally made it to him. The way that Gabriel flung himself at him, wrapping his arms tightly around him, only made Sam laugh. He hugged back easily and was still smiling when they pulled apart. “Thank Dad.” Gabriel swore easily when he looked at Sam’s face. Relief lit his eyes. “I was beginning to think I wouldn’t find you.”

“I knew you would. I’ve just been waiting for you to get here.”

He watched surprise dance across Gabriel’s face. Chuckling, Sam patted the car next to him, a gesture for the other to join him here. After a second, Gabriel did just that. He scrambled up onto the car and sat right up against Sam’s side.

Once they were settled, Sam reclined himself once more, and he felt as Gabriel did the same beside him. It was better they were comfortable. Sam knew this conversation was going to take a while. “I take it things aren’t looking too good out there.”

“To say the least.” Gabriel quipped. Then, hesitantly, “How much do you know of what’s going on, Sammy?”

His lips curved and he tilted his head so he could look up at the shapes of the clouds in the sky. “Everything. Or, as much as I can, in here. More than I did before.” He knew that probably didn’t make sense to the archangel. Turning, he grinned at the slight look of confusion Gabriel wore.

In contrast to Sam’s smiles, Gabriel looked serious. It was like a complete role reversal for them. Usually in their encounters Gabriel had always been the joking one, the one with a quip and a smile and a ready laugh, and Sam had been the one full of fear and angst and so many other things. To see them switched around now was…amusing.

“Sam, I’ll be honest with you.”

Sam chuckled. “That’d be nice.”

“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but, be serious for a moment. You’re… you’re breaking apart, in ways I’m not quite sure how to fix. But I’m going to try.”

Reaching over, Sam patted at Gabriel’s leg. “I know you will. But you have to realize, I’ve been broken for a long time now, Gabriel. A really long time. Time in the Cage runs even after than the time in the rest of hell. The only reason I’ve survived as long as I have is because of, well, of this.” He gestured around him. “I created this a long time ago. A little hideaway where I could put the best parts of myself. A place where the Cage couldn’t touch me, not at my very core. Then I gave up the rest of myself. I sacrificed big parts of myself to keep this place in here safe. But a mind’s not made to work like that, and the Cage is a bitch. It doesn’t want just piece of you. It wants _everything_.”

“You talk about the Cage like it’s alive.” Gabriel said slowly.

Sam nodded. “Close enough. It feels like it, sometimes. At least it did to me. The Cage, it was made to hold one archangel, not two, and definitely not a human. I don’t think I would’ve survived as long as I did if it weren’t for Michael and Lucifer giving me bits of their grace to piece me back together. That made me a little more than human, just enough to be able to live. Before they did that, I was pretty much trapped in the torture-dreams all the time. But having bits of their grace made me just enough beyond human that Lucifer could latch onto me and yank me out of them.”

“Lucifer _helped you_?”

The incredulity in Gabriel’s tone reminded Sam that the archangel was only working on half information right now. Here, in this safe place, parts of Sam that had been broken before were together for the first time. The part of him that he’d broken off to save had been hiding in here in this little bubble of safety that he’d created so long ago. Now, with the rest of him breaking apart, what bits of him were left had all come here and merged, making him more whole than he’d been in a long, long time. It gave him memories not just of the Cage, but of parts of his life since he’d been sent back. Not all of it made sense yet – the chaos outside of this little bubble was too much for that. But Sam thought he understood some of it. The longer that Gabriel was here, the more that Sam was understanding some of it. But the longer the chaos out there went on, the more he could feel himself losing bits of it, too.

“It doesn’t matter.” Sam said softly. “The damage is too much. I don’t think I’ll make it through much more.”

A hand gripped his shirt and Sam found himself yanked onto his side, brought face to face with Gabriel, who looked beyond furious. “If you think I came all the way in here just to let you go, Winchester, you’ve got another damn thing coming.”

“How can you fix this?” Sam asked, gesturing with one hand around him without ever breaking free of Gabriel’s grip. “You had to see it all when you came to here. There’s almost nothing left out there, Gabriel.”

“Let me bond you.”

The stunned look that Sam could feel on his own face was matched by the one on Gabriel’s. It was obvious that he hadn’t planned on saying those words. Yet now that they were out, he didn’t try and take them back. He pushed away his own shock and his expression became firm. “Let me bond you, Sam. Usually it can’t really be done with a human. But the grace in you, it’s yours now. It’s tied so deeply to your soul it could never be taken out. If I tie my grace to yours, I can feed you strength and help you heal. It won’t be instant and it won’t be easy. I can’t take away the hell memories. You’re gonna have nightmares and flashbacks and all those things every other vet does when they come home from war. But we’ll be so tied together I can _share_ it, an we can deal with it together.”

“You’d tie yourself like that – to me? You’d take on all of this,” He gestured towards the sky with one hand, towards the chaos that they both knew was out there. “For me?”

“Absolutely.” Again, Gabriel looked surprised by his own words, but he let them stand.

Sam stared at him with a sense of awe. “What…” He paused, swallowing down the lump in his throat. “What would that mean? What would it do?”

“It’d tie us together, permanently. When angels bond there’s a grace-link between them that can’t be broken. I don’t even know if Dad could break it. We’d be able to feel one another, to always know where the other is and how they’re doing. We’d be able to talk mind to mind. If one of us dies, the other would follow. An I could give you strength, to help you heal. Whatever else… I don’t know. You’ve got enough human in you still that I don’t know what’ll happen. But it’s the only thing I can think of, Sam. If we don’t do something, you’re not gonna make it. I can’t fix all that damage out there. Not alone.”

It was an amazing and terrifying offer. Sam didn’t want to share something like this. He didn’t want to put this kind of pain off on anyone. But Gabriel was staring at him and the look he wore said that he knew what he was offering here and he wasn’t afraid. How, Sam had no idea. He had to have seen the damage as he came in here. How could he be willing to deal with all that?

Gabriel let go of Sam’s shirt to bring his hand up and cup his face. His touch was gentle as he slid it over Sam’s cheek. “I think you were sent back for a reason, Sam. You were sent to _me_ for a reason. You make me feel things I’ve kept hidden for a long damn time. An you pull out a part of me I didn’t even know still existed. I know what I’m offering. I wish I could take more time, let us get more comfortable with each other, but…”

“But there isn’t time.” Sam finished for him. He stared at Gabriel for a long moment and felt his thoughts slowly settle. There was only one answer he could think of to give and he didn’t let himself think overlong about it. “Okay. Yes, Gabriel.”

This time Gabriel looked even more stunned than before. It was obvious he hadn’t expected Sam to accept; at least, not so easily. “You realize what this means, Sam? We’ll be together, always. There’s no getting away from me after this. I know you haven’t always liked me. We haven’t exactly been on the friendliest of terms, Sammo. Last I knew in this time you pretty much wanted to kill me.”

Laughing, Sam shook his head. “I’ve always liked you, Gabriel, in one form or another. That’s not to say I didn’t want to stake you a time or twelve more…”

“Wouldn’t work.”

Sam smirked at him. “I know.” He drew in a breath and watched Gabriel’s face carefully. He needed to say this and he had a feeling Gabriel really needed to hear it. “I don’t entirely know how to explain it. I liked you when you were the janitor, even if I didn’t like what came after. And Mystery Spot… there were still days just the sound of Asia was enough to almost put me into a panic attack.” He paused and then shrugged. “But, I don’t know. I understood, I guess. I understood why you did it. And once we found out who you really were, once we got that out of you, I understood even more. I know what it’s like to run away from home. In the end, you stepped up and you tried to help. Everything you did was to try and help. Maybe your methods sucked, but you were always trying to help, and you never seriously hurt us.” Unable to resist, Sam slanted a look towards the archangel and smirked, just a little. “Well, except for a giant ball to the nuts. I owe you for that one.”

Just as he’d hoped, his words startled a laugh out of Gabriel. Quickly followed by a demand to know what the hell he was talking about.

It felt sort of good to sit and tell what he remembered of TV Land. He didn’t question why his memories were so good on that compared to the foggy ones from other places. Maybe it had something to do with Gabriel being right there. Either way, he remembered it pretty clearly and he recounted it all for Gabriel, who grinned throughout the entire thing.

“I turned you into a car?” Gabriel asked towards the end. He let out another laugh. “Oh, man. I bet you were gorgeous, Sambo!”

“Yeah, you seemed to think so.” Still, he couldn’t help but smile. “You did a lot for us, Gabriel, and, I don’t know…there was always something there. What’s happened in this… this timeline… it’s only cemented that.” He brought his own hand up to press over the one Gabriel still had on his cheek and he gave him three words that weren’t easy for him to say – three of the most important words he would ever say. “I trust you.”

Everything around them seemed to light up a little at that. Like Gabriel’s grace just couldn’t be contained.

When he leaned in, Sam leaned in as well, meeting him right in the middle. The first touch of lips felt strangely to Sam like coming home. When he felt grace as well, all around him, he didn’t fight against it, didn’t pull away from it. He let go of the walls he’d been fighting to keep around himself and this little sanctuary and he let the light fill him until there was nothing left in his world except Gabriel.

The safety of Bobby’s place fell away around him and Sam was lost of waves of light.

* * *

When he opened his eyes again, Sam found that he was still being cradled by Gabriel, the archangel’s eyes still right in front of him. But they were no longer in Sam’s mind. They were lying on the bed where he’d gone to sleep last night and Gabriel was straddling his waist, pinning him down on his back.

The fear and pain that he’d felt before wasn’t gone – it was still there, still racing through his mind and leaving his soul aching, only this time there was something else there as well. Another grace, mingled and meshed with his own, that stroked over him and soothed a bit of the ache inside. _Gabriel_. “ _I feel you._ ” Sam murmured, the Enochian slipping past his lips without thought.

“I can feel you, too.” Gabriel said back. His own words were in English and Sam was thrilled to find that he understood them. He hadn’t been able to speak them yet, but he’d understood!

Gabriel’s lips curved up and he pressed in for a soft kiss. “You’re healing, a little.” He said against Sam’s lips. “It’ll take time, but it should start to come back bit by bit. The bond worked, Sam.” His grace stroked against Sam’s and the shock of it, the amazing feel of it, stunned him even more. “I’ve got you. You’re gonna be okay.”

“ _I am really here._ ” Sam breathed out. Inside his head it had all seemed to make sense. The parts of himself that had been separated had come together and so much of it had made sense. Yet the world had been sort of, different, in there. Everything so much easier. Out here, it was all much more _real_. A lot of it was sinking in and Sam felt the amazement and shock that he hadn’t felt before as he finally realized something very, very important. “ _This is not all a dream. I am not… I am not in the Cage._ ”

“Nope. You’re here, Sam. This is real.”

Tears built in Sam’s eyes and he closed them quickly. When he felt Gabriel move, he easily allowed the archangel to roll them to the side and draw him in close. There, buried against him, with his face pressed in against Gabriel’s neck, Sam let go. He let the tears fall and soak through Gabriel’s shirt while the archangel held him safe and close with both body and grace.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just to let you guys know, it's probably going to take me about a week to update. I've got a busy work week and a trip over the weekend. I'll try to update before I go but I might not manage it until I get back. I'm sorry! At least I didn't leave you with a cliffhanger ;)
> 
> Thank you for all your reviews so far, they're great! I hope this chapter didn't disappoint :)


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took so long! The Con and then RL threw me for a while, so I've had a bit trying to get back into this story. I'll try to get back to my weekly (Monday) updates, but next weeks might be a bit delayed too since Monday is only like, what, four days away? We'll see, though. I'll do my best!
> 
> Hope you like this

There was only so long that Gabriel could keep them locked away in his room. He’d magically sealed the door as best as he could before he’d dove down into Sam’s mind to try and fix him. His seal had done the job – no one had come in. That didn’t mean that they’d all gone away, though. The archangel could sense them out there. Bobby’s worry and annoyance, Castiel’s confusion as well as a surprising amount of worry from the little seraph, and the almost overwhelming wave of absolute _fear_ that was coming off of Dean only barely covered up by the temper that he seemed to fall back on whenever he was afraid. All of them were out there waiting to be able to get in.

At least they weren’t banging on the door anymore. Gabriel attributed that to Castiel; most likely the angel had told them how pointless it would be.

Still, Gabriel kept them locked safely in here until all of Sam’s tears had run dry. The kid deserved a damn good cry after everything he’d been through. He kept Sam in the circle of his arms and held him together while Sam let down the walls he’d held around himself and let his emotions come pouring out. With Gabriel around him and their graces bound together, it was easy for the archangel to make sure that Sam’s emotions didn’t effect the world around him.

The bond between them was stronger and brighter than Gabriel had thought it would be. It was – amazing. He could feel Sam beside him and inside of him. The closest Gabriel had ever come to this feeling was when he’d been back home and everything had still been good. Heaven had been happy and the angels had shared their grace easily, no secrets or lies or anything hidden between them. It’d truly been a paradise. Yet that paled in comparison to _this_. He was inside of Sam and Sam was inside of him. They were joined together on a deeper level than Gabriel had ever been with anyone else. It was terrifying and thrilling and everything he’d never known he’d wanted. _Mine_ , his grace whispered, stroking over Sam’s, and it thrilled him to hear the immediate _Yours_ that Sam sent in return. A second later he let out a startled little laugh when Sam’s grace reached almost hesitantly back to him, a brush of pleasure and possessiveness in there tinged by a hesitance that said he wasn’t quite sure he was allowed. Sam’s soft _Mine_ was edged with a questioning sound that Gabriel easily soothed down. The archangel sent back his own _Yours_ , adding on a soft _Always, Sam. Always yours._

Their bond allowed Gabriel to feed Sam strength to battle back some of the memories that were trying to rip the kid apart. When Gabriel had dove inside of him, he’d been able to see and feel where Sam was breaking apart, his grace trying and failing to heal all the damage. Now, with Gabriel’s grace flowing through him, feeding him the strength he needed, it wasn’t threatening to rip him apart anymore. Oh, it wasn’t an immediate fix. Sam wasn’t magically healed or anything. Like he’d told the hunter, this would take time and effort. He’d just given Sam the strength to fight for himself.

There was someone else, however, who could help feed Sam a bit more strength, and maybe even heal a little bit of the damage inside.

“There’s someone out there who wants to see you.” Gabriel murmured against Sam’s hair. The kid had tucked himself in until his face was pressed right up against Gabriel’s collarbone. “He’s been waiting rather impatiently to make sure I haven’t killed you or anything like that.”

He felt a huff of breath against his skin that might’ve been a laugh. “ _My brother_.”

Enochian was quite a different language than English and their words could carry so many meanings depending on which one you used. There were multiple forms of ‘brother’, ranging from the one that was used to describe a brother-in-arms, a close friend, to the one that Sam had just used, one that spoke of love and devotion and respect.

Gabriel smiled and rubbed his cheek against Sam’s hair. “Yeah, kiddo. Your brother. I locked em outta the room so I could help you without us burning their eyes out. Figured you wouldn’t be too pleased if we did.” He smirked when he felt Sam huff out another laughing breath. “You want me to let him in? Or have them wait a little longer?”

“ _I want to see him._ ” Sam’s grace twisted a little, uncertainty showing clear, and then his nose was brushing against Gabriel’s skin in a soft nuzzle that was most likely self-soothing and probably shouldn’t make Gabriel’s vessel buzz happily. “ _This has been – hard for him. I have not been kind. I did not realize this was actually him. I thought...”_

“I know.” And Gabriel did know. He understood now how Sam had viewed everything. “I’ll explain it to him, Samshine, don’t worry. He’ll understand. Much as your brother drives me bonkers, he loves the hell outta you. It’ll be fine.”

It only took a little more reassuring before the two of them sat up together in the bed. Gabriel stayed against the headboard, legs curled up in front of him, and Sam had made himself actually pull out of the circle of Gabriel’s arms to sit up in the bed, though his hip was still flush against Gabriel’s thigh. Only then, when the archangel was sure that Sam was ready, did he take the lock off the door. He knew Castiel would feel the change and let the others know. There was no need to call out to them.

Sure enough, it only took a moment before the door was snapping open and Dean Winchester came charging in, Castiel and Bobby only seconds behind him. “What the hell is going on here?” Dean demanded sharply. “What’d you do to my brother?”

Gabriel had expected Sam to have some kind of visible reaction. The kid’s emotions were much more towards the surface than they usually were and he was still raw enough that he couldn’t lock them all down. Still, he hadn’t expected _this_.

All it took was one look at Dean’s face and Sam was moving. Gabriel watched as the younger Winchester lit up, body and grace, and gave one of the first true smiles that any one of them had seen since he came back – not counting the ones Gabriel had seen when inside Sam’s head. “Dean!” Sam cried out. Then, with all the faith of a little brother who had done this before and who knew his big brother was always going to be there to catch him, Sam practically launched himself up off the bed and straight at Dean.

Castiel and Gabriel both jerked as if to help only to settle back as Dean caught Sam up like he’d done this a thousand times. It didn’t matter that Sam was taller, though he was skinnier right now with all the weight he’d lost. Dean caught him easily and only staggered one single step before his feet were firmly planted and he was curling his arms around the slender body that was now plastered to him. Sam’s arms were around Dean’s waist and his face was in Dean’s neck. In that moment, Gabriel saw a side of Dean that so very few got to see. The older hunter’s face softened and he looked down as best he could at Sam’s face, love bright in his eyes. “Hey.” He murmured. One arm was around Sam’s back and the other came up to cup the back of his head, fingers threading through Sam’s hair in what looked like a familiar gesture. “Hey there, little brother. It’s all right. I’ve got you.”

“Dean.” Sam mumbled happily. There was the sound of tears in his voice. Yet Gabriel could feel the joy and relief that were singing in Sam’s grace. The kid was thrilled to be here in his brother’s arms, a place he’d been so sure he was never going to be again.

In the times Gabriel had spied on the Winchesters he’d heard Dean spout his ‘no chick-flick’ rule. Apparently that didn’t apply in situations like these. The two clung to one another like they weren’t ever planning on letting go and Dean was keeping up a steady murmur of soothing words whispered against Sam’s hair.

Eventually they had to move forward a little. The angle was awkward and Sam was hunched over. But Sam refused to let go entirely, so they ended up with Sam sitting on the edge of the bed and Dean standing. It allowed Sam to keep his arms around Dean and to bury his face against Dean’s chest. _Against Dean’s soul,_ Gabriel realized, eyebrows shooting up in surprise. Sam could see his brother’s soul and was grounding himself in it, using it to reassure himself that this was indeed Dean, that he really was real, and that they were both okay. And, even more stunning, Dean’s soul was lighting up in return, like some part of him actually understood what Sam needed and was giving it to him. Damn. These two were more connected than Gabriel had ever realized.

A soft little whisper reached into the back of Gabriel’s mind – Sam’s shy mind voice, testing out their new connection. ‘ _Castiel told us once that we were soul mates. We share a Heaven. Our souls are, tied.’_

‘ _Huh.’_ Gabriel sent back, musing on that. It wasn’t common but it did happen. ‘ _Go figure. Guess that explains why I could never get you to let him go.’_

A voice suddenly interrupted them. “If no one else is gonna ask, I guess I will. What the hell happened in here?” Bobby asked.

His voice had Sam looking up. Though the young hunter didn’t break away from Dean, he smiled through the tears and made a happy sound low in his throat. “Bobby.”

The grizzled old hunter looked down to Sam and he seemed to soften as well. Privately, Gabriel mused that all these tough guys were just hard outer shells with the gooey caramel inside. They all went to mush at the obvious happiness on Sam’s face.

Bobby reached out and tucked a bit of Sam’s hair behind his ear, cupping the side of his head briefly as he did. “Hey there, kid.”

“ _Hello, Bobby._ ” Sam murmured.

The peace on his bondmate’s face, the joy and content that were radiating to him from Sam, had Gabriel smiling. This right here was what Sam had been needing. There were parts of him that were healing just the slightest bit from even this simple thing. Just a hug and the love of his family.

It was Gabriel’s family who interrupted the little moment that was happening. “Brother.” Castiel said the word slowly, bright blue eyes locked on Gabriel. “What have you done?”

Every set of eyes except Sam’s turned to look at Gabriel now. The archangel didn’t flinch under those stares. He had absolutely nothing to be ashamed about here. Nor could he quite stop the hint of pride that was on the first few words. “We bonded, grace to grace. It was the only way he was getting out of his head. Everything in there was shredding apart faster than his grace could heal.”

“So you _bonded_ him?” Castiel sounded aghast. His wings drew back and spread in open shock.

A hint of heat entered Gabriel’s gaze. “Mind yourself, Castiel.” There was no way in hell Gabriel was going to let Castiel yell at him while inside his own house, let alone inside of his own room. “And I suggest you be polite about what you say. Our bonding seems to have helped Sam piece himself together enough that he can understand English now. He still speaks in Enochian, but he understands everything we’re saying. Aint that right, Sam-a-lam-a?”

His answer came in the form of a low, slow blink before Sam turned his face back into Dean’s shirt. Amusement curled through Gabriel and he reached out to Sam’s grace, stroking over it with his own.

It looked like Dean wasn’t entirely sure what he should focus on here. The fact that his brother and Gabriel were bonded was obviously something that he had questions about. That had been clearly written all over his face from the minute Gabriel said it. But hearing that his brother understood him, that Sam could actually hear what he was saying now, seemed to have caught him as well and he kept looking down at him like there was so much he wanted to say, he just didn’t seem to know how to start saying it. Finally he must’ve settled on one question because he tilted his face up towards Gabriel and his eyes were dark and a bit hard as they latched onto the archangel. “This bonding thing – it’s gonna help save him?”

“Yep.” Gabriel leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees, leaving his hands free to gesture as he spoke. “It’s not gonna be instant. You guys gotta realize that. It’s gonna take time and effort on everyone’s part for him to get better. He’ll still have flashbacks and nightmares and all those things any normal vet has. Maybe a little more than most, considering what the Cage did to him. But being bonded with me gives him the strength to make sure those memories and things don’t shred what’s left of his mind or his soul.”

“To bond is a very private and intimate thing.” Castiel said. He looked over at Sam and furrowed his brows a little before shifting his gaze back to Gabriel. “It is a thing that should not be used lightly. Gabriel…”

It wasn’t that hard to see where Castiel’s thoughts were going and Gabriel let his wings arch up behind him in very clear warning. Bonds _were_ very private and intimate, and also very sacred, and it was rare for an angel to bond – let alone an archangel. It didn’t take a genius to see the way that Castiel was glancing at Sam, as if questioning his worthiness and finding it lacking. Bad enough that he was looking at Sam like that. Gabriel wasn’t going to let him actually voice his issues. “ _You need to mind your manners, Castiel. What is done is done and I would not change it even if I could – which you know I cannot. He is mine and I am his. I suggest you adjust to it._ ” The warning in those last few words was very, very clear.

Sam pushed against Dean, twisting himself just enough to still be touching his brother but also able to turn and look back at the bed. “Gabriel.” Just his name, imbued with warning.

“Sambino.”

The nickname had the young man rolling his eyes. “ _Be nice to your brother._ ”

Gabriel wrinkled his nose and made a face just to draw out the smile he knew it would get him. “Ew, no. Where’s the fun in that?”

Shaking his head, Sam smiled nonetheless. Then he turned a bit and looked up at Dean, who was watching him cautiously. Gabriel could read Sam’s hesitance even without being able to feel it in the rolling of his grace. The kid reached out like he wasn’t quite sure he was going to be allowed to do this. Dean didn’t move, though. He stayed still and let Sam’s fingers find his face, let them trace over his eyebrows and down over the right side of his face. They paused for a moment against something on Dean’s jawline. Gabriel caught an impression of Sam’s thoughts floating along his grace. Memories of making these same gestures countless times in the past, reassuring himself that his brother was there, that he was real. After nightmares, when his heart was pounding in his chest and the fear was there that he was alone, so damn alone. After death, a quick cup of Dean’s cheek, a reassurance that his brother was there. Burying his brother, feeling the coolness of his cheek and knowing he’d never again feel the life under it.

Those memories washed through Sam one after another and Gabriel had to bite his tongue to keep himself quiet and to contain himself. His grace ached, though, at all these two had gone through. And for all Dean’s gruffness, all his attitude and such, the way he stood there now obviously embarrassed in front of others and yet still allowing his little brother the moment he needed – it brought him up a bit in Gabriel’s mind. No matter his faults, he cared for Sam. More than he cared for himself, really. And that was something Gabriel could respect.

Everything in Sam’s head seemed to be fighting to put itself in order and Gabriel started to think about how to get everyone out of here. As much as Sam had needed this, his head and their bond needed a chance to settle down a bit before any serious talking could happen.

It was pushing it – they needed to make some sort of plan. But Sam’s well-being too precedence and Gabriel needed to be with him to ensure his well-being. The bonding as well as the chaos that was already in Sam’s head was almost too much. It just showed yet again how damn strong the kid was.

In Heaven, bonded angels secluded themselves for days when they first created their bonds just so the two would have plenty of time to get used to everything that came with bonding. Tying yourself to someone else like this was extremely intimate and Gabriel had heard it took a lot of adjustment. He could understand that now; his grace and Sam’s grace were twined together in a way that was unlike anything else he’d ever known. It felt perfect. It felt like _home_. But it was a bit crazy. He could feel his own emotions at the same time that he could feel the awe and joy that Sam was feeling, as well as his fear that this was all going to disappear and the pain that was so deep and so much a part of him the young hunter didn’t even seem to notice it himself.

Gabriel didn’t realize at first that Sam must be picking up on his emotions as well. Not until the hunter turned and those hazel eyes locked on Gabriel. The world sort of felt like it was falling away around them while the two stared at one another. Everything that Gabriel felt, Sam was feeling, and everything Sam felt, Gabriel was feeling, making for one big circle they were in danger of getting lost in.

Through their grace, he saw himself as Sam had seen him. At the college, at Mystery Spot, and then at somewhere that Gabriel didn’t know, somewhere that he hadn’t done yet in this timeline. Some strange warehouse like Sam had told him about when they’d been inside Sam’s head. TV Land, played over and over again, as Gabriel tried to make them play their parts. The trickster saw all of it playing out in memories from Sam’s grace to his, all these little connections that were a part of their relationship, all things that Sam thought of when he thoguht of the archangel. There were emotions there, too. So many emotions it was hard to decipher them all. Burning brightest were emotions that would’ve stolen Gabriel’s breath if he really had a need to breathe. Affection, _trust_ , and something that he couldn’t, wouldn’t, put a name to.

Other images tried to push in, some strange hotel and what looked like a room full of pagans, with Gabriel busting in through a set of double doors – and then abruptly it was shut down. He saw Sam’s eyes go wide and knew that the kid had figured out whatever that memory was, and that Gabriel was seeing it all, and he’d cut it down before it could play out. Gabriel wanted to ask him what the hell was so special about that, while at the same time finding himself surprisingly afraid to actually ask. There was a voice inside his head that he wasn’t sure if it came from him or Sam, telling him that he didn’t want to know the answer to his questions.

It took a hell of a lot of effort for the two of them to pull enough apart to come back to reality.

When they did, Gabriel saw that Dean was clutching at Sam’s shoulder, trying to pull him back a bit, with Bobby doing the exact same to Dean and trying to pull _him_ back, and he saw Sam’s flinch at the pull. The gesture was instinctive on the young hunter’s part; he still wasn’t good with touch. That hadn’t been magically fixed by their bonding. Seeing that brought on an instinctive reaction in Gabriel as well. He growled low in his throat and felt his wings snap up behind him.

Castiel was the one to break the tension. “Dean, release him.” His voice was sharp enough that it actually startled the older Winchester into doing just that. Gabriel privately marveled at that achievement and there was a part of him that kind of wanted to mock Dean for it. The rest of him was too busy reaching out to Sam to gather him up and pull him in, curling one side of his wings around the hunter protectively.

His own wings out and ready to shield Dean, another thing that Gabriel added to his mental list to tease about later, Castiel drew himself back from the bed just a little. He recognized a protective angel when he saw one and he was smart enough to know how much worse it would be with an archangel. “Gabriel, your bond is still too new. You two need to take some time to let it settle. It might be best if the rest of us left for a bit.”

Surprisingly, amidst the protests from Dean, it was Sam’s voice that rang the clearest. “ _No, we cannot.”_

All eyes turned towards Sam and he shook just slightly underneath those gazes. Gabriel stroked his feathers soothingly over Sam’s arm and sent a swell of grace to him to reassure him.

That seemed to give Sam a bit of confidence back. He straightened up a little and looked at Gabriel’s face. “ _There are more important things that need to be dealt with, yes? If I am right, there will be angels hunting us after what I did to...to Uriel. And if Lucifer is not free, there is still the apocalypse they are trying to start. We should… we should talk._ ”

“Cas is right, kiddo.” Gabriel reached out and tucked a bit of Sam’s hair behind his ear, expression gentling. “Bonding is an intense thing. I know you can feel it. We should really take a bit to get ourselves settled. And your head’s still a bit messed up from earlier. Some cuddling and sleep might be the best thing right now.”

“ _Gabriel_.” The sound of his name in Enochian, along with the emotion in Sam’s grace as he said it, was like music to Gabriel’s ears. Even if he didn’t quite like what came next. “ _We need to talk. This is important._ ”

“Sammy,”

“No.” Sam’s voice was firm on one of the few English words he did know how to say. It stayed just as firm when he switched back to Enochian. “ _We have wasted enough time with my troubles. This is important and it needs to be dealt with. More lives than my own are at stake. Everything that happened to me, everything I did, was to save the lives of others. Please do not make that meaningless and prevent me from trying to stop it from happening all over again. Please._ ”

Dad dammit. There wasn’t a damn thing Gabriel could say in defense to that and the little shit knew it. He closed his eyes so he wouldn’t have to see the way that Sam was looking at him and then he shook his head. “You play dirty, you little brat. Fine. We’ll have a short talk out in the living room, but I reserve the right to snap us back here if things start to get bad. You’re my first priority here, kiddo, and I’ll be damned if I’m gonna let you screw yourself up _again_ to save everyone else. Am I clear?”

It occurred to him that taking that snappish kind of tone with Sam probably wasn’t really the best of things to do. Then Sam smiled at him – a bigger smile than he’d showed anyone else so far, even if it wasn’t as big as the dimpled one he’d given Gabriel while they were inside his head. That smile alone eased some of the tension in Gabriel’s shoulders and had him sitting a little bit easier.

 _Oh, Gabe, you are so screwed_ , he told himself, shaking his head at how one hunter with a puppy dog look had reduced him to this. He was screwed – and he couldn’t bring himself to regret a moment of it.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look what happens when I make myself buckle down and pull up the Write or Die2 program. :P Most of this was written this morning - at least a good 3/4 of it.
> 
> Sorry for the wait, I hope you enjoy it!

Sam knew that Gabriel was worried about him. Even if he hadn’t been able to see it written all over his face, their bond allowed him to feel it. It felt like Gabriel was woven through every single inch of him now. There was nowhere in Sam that he didn’t feel some sort of connection to the archangel. It was amazing and wonderful – and just a bit terrifying. Gabriel had literally tied himself to Sam. He’d joined them together in something that Sam could feel was beyond intimate. And for what? To save the shattered remains of some shredded soul no one had cared for to begin with? Whatever was left of him, whatever he’d been made into by his time in the Cage, he wasn’t human anymore, and he wasn’t full angel. He definitely wasn’t worthy of this amazing being.

A low growl was his only warning before Sam found himself yanked downwards. Gabriel had apparently sat down on the couch while Sam was lost in thought and he tugged the hunter down to him so that Sam ended up actually sitting half on his lap and half beside him. Though Gabriel said nothing out loud, his voice floated through Sam’s head like a beautiful melody. One tinged with annoyance. _‘You are immensely more amazing than you think you are, Sam Winchester. Don’t let anyone, not even yourself, tell you otherwise.’_

If the others wondered about the blush on Sam’s cheeks, they didn’t say anything.

Everyone spread out through the living room and got themselves comfortable. Bobby took a comfy looking armchair, right in Sam’s view – thank God for that, because now that he knew they were real, Sam really just wanted to keep them in sight for a little bit, just _see_ them – and Castiel stood awkwardly off to the side. It was Dean who hesitated for a moment. But he and Sam locked eyes and something of their old connection still seemed to be there because he read something in his brother’s gaze that firmed his spine and had him coming to sit down with Sam and Gabriel without any sign of his previous hesitation.

It was hard for Sam not to just stare at Dean. He was _real_. He was really here. This was _actually Dean_ , not some figment created by the cage, not some specter to torment him. It was Dean. Not just any Dean, either, but a Dean from before the apocalypse. Still after Hell, but before Lucifer got free, before Sam screwed everything up with Ruby. Before all of it. Dean was still a bit screwed up from Hell but he didn’t hate Sam yet. At least, it didn’t seem like it.

_That will change,_ Sam thought to himself. _As soon as he knows the truth, it will change._

_Have faith._

That thought drifted in from Gabriel and it had Sam turning to lift an eyebrow at him. He felt Gabriel’s chuckle inside their bond as well as through his body – a body which Sam was still sort of draped over and curled up against. Gabriel’s grace pressed up against Sam’s in a gesture that felt sort of like a hug. Like the hugs that Michael had given him, those gentle brushes, when Sam had been wrapped up in Lucifer’s embrace. _Yeah, yeah, yeah,_ Gabriel said teasingly. _I know, it sounds strange coming from me. But seriously, kiddo, have a little faith in your brother. All he cares about is you right now. He’ll get through the rest of it._

_He did not last time_. Sam sent back.

_Yeah, well, this time you’ve got me here to knock some sense into him. Or smite him. I’m not really picky on which one._

The teasing eased Sam like nothing else would’ve. It was reminiscent of the way that Dean had always handled Sam’s emotional moments. He’d poke and tease until Sam pulled up out of his funk.

“Sammy?”

Dean’s voice cut into the silent conversation and had both Sam and Gabriel looking up. It was Gabriel who apologized for them, knowing that Dean wouldn’t understand Sam’s words right now. “Sorry, bucko. I was talking Sam down a bit. He’s having a little trouble reorienting his past with our present. It’s a bit confusing.”

“You were talking him down?” Bobby asked skeptically, looking back and forth between the two.

A grin lit up Gabriel's face and he nodded. “Yeah.” Lifting one hand, he pointed a finger back and forth between his and Sam's heads. “Bonded. Comes with a nice side of telepathy.”

“Great, so you two are in each other’s heads now.” Dean rolled his eyes and flopped back in his seat. “That sounds just freaking great.”

Turning his head, Gabriel looked over and arched one eyebrow at the older Winchester. “I find it adorable that you think I couldn't be in your heads before, bucko.” At Dean's outraged look, Gabriel laughed and sat back again, one arm curling around Sam and drawing him in a little better. “You can yell at me for it later, Deano. Right now we should be focusing on bigger problems than a bit of telepathy. You know – angels after us, Hell hunting us down, the whole Apocalypse thing? Might be just a _bit_ more important right now.”

The thought crossed Sam’s mind that these two irritated one another just as much in this timeline as they had in his own. In an effort to relax himself a little and to maybe, hopefully, relax Dean a bit as well, Sam pushed his legs out a little until he could nudge his toes underneath Dean's thigh. To his credit, Dean didn't jump much at the touch. When he noticed it he didn't pull away, either. He just rolled his eyes and pretended like there was nothing going on, which for Dean was the same as saying it was okay. “How are we supposed to stop them?” He dropped his hand down, hesitantly touching Sam's ankle. When Sam didn't jump, Dean curled his fingers in a little and let his thumb lightly trace over Sam's skin. The touch was soothing. Sam let himself enjoy it; this nonthreatening touch from a brother he’d been sure he would never see again.

“Heaven and Hell will not stop.” Castiel said. He said it simple, like it was nothing more than a fact, not something that had a huge impact on their lives. Yet his eyes flickered over to Dean and flashed with something that Sam doubted the angel even realized was there. “They will hunt you both until they find you. You are too important to their plans.”

Gabriel snorted and shook his head. “Yeah, 'important'. Their plans are moot without you two.”

“So what do we do?” Bobby asked.

“We have to hide.” Gabriel said simply. Everyone looked at him and he didn't flinch from their stares. “What? They need Sammy here to kill Lilith so that they can set Luci free. They can't find you two, they can't set big bro free, and there's no apocalypse. Seems pretty self-explanatory to me.”

Dean wrinkled his nose. “You want us to _hide_?” He said the words like they were something disgusting. “Dude, we don't hide. We can stop them.”

“You think you can stop them.” Gabriel shot back. “You've got no idea what you're up against here. I bet you guys thought you could stop them in Sammy's timeline, too. See how well that worked out.”

That had Sam flinching a little. He felt Gabriel's grace reach out to him in apology and he let it soothe down the memories that tried to crop up.

Dean wasn't as easy to soothe, though. “Like hell I’m gonna hole up somewhere and hide!” He'd always been a fighter. If there was trouble, he met it head on, usually with weapons or even with his fists. It'd been Sam who was the one who sat back and researched and planned. That just wasn't Dean's style. Running and hiding definitely wasn't. Push comes to shove, it wasn't Sam's either.

A sneer curled Gabriel's mouth and twisted it into an expression that made Sam think of the Trickster and countless Tuesdays. “You got a better idea, genius?” The trickster demanded.

“Yeah!” Dean snapped. “We fight.”

“Oh, yeah, _great_ idea there, Rambo. Fighting against Heaven and Hell with, what?” Gabriel lifted a finger and pointed it at his own chest.” A runaway archangel-turned-trickster.” Then he moved his finger, pointing it at each of them in turn. “A cocky hunter, a runaway seraph, a grumpy old hunter, and a man out of his own timeline whose soul is _still_ in desperate need of repairs. Oh, yeah, that sounds like a great plan.” Sarcasm dripped off of every single word. “Tell me again, how is it that you're actually still alive? Cause if this is the way you plan things, it's a wonder you've managed to survive this long.”

Dean's expression was thunderous and Sam knew that look, knew that it promised shouting in the near future, and he couldn't quite contain the small shiver that he gave at the though. He didn't want fighting. Jesus, he didn't want to hear more fighting.

Before anyone else could shout, Bobby held his hands out on either side and wrangled the conversation back under control just like he'd always done when Dean and Sam got too heated, or back even when Dean, Sam and John would argue about a case. “All right, that's enough.” Bobby snapped at them. He shot a glare at Dean, cutting off whatever the hunter might've been about to say. “You know he's right, boy. We've barely been surviving just trying to hide an that was when we thought Heaven was on our side. You wanna try an go up against Heaven with just us? It's a suicide mission!”

“We can't just hide, Bobby!” Dean cried out.

“Did I say we should, princess?” Bobby snarked back at him. He huffed and gave a small shake of his head. “We can't go right at em, but we can't hide forever, either. Livin' our lives shut up in a house somewhere away from the world aint no kind of life at all. There's gotta be a middle ground. But I don't think we're gonna find it here arguing with one another.”

“We should retreat, for now.” Castiel chimed in.

Bobby nodded his agreement. “Exactly. We need a place to hunker down and hide out while Sam heals and we can come up with something better.”

It looked like Gabriel wanted to argue the 'something better' part of things. However, he took a look at Sam and most likely could both see and feel the tension on him. It had Gabriel blowing out a breath and tempering his own response. “This place is warded as good as any of my other places.” He finally said, voice even. “I can add a few more, with Cassie's help, an we can key some of them to you guys if you don't mind donating a little blood. It'll make it a sanctuary while we try and plan.” A hint of the skepticism that he was feeling leaked into those last words.

So far, Sam had been quiet, content to stay here on Gabriel's lap and let the others work their way through the tension they felt. He'd insisted on coming out here not because he had any real plan yet but because he wanted to be involved. He wanted to know what was going on and what was going to happen. Right now Sam knew he was the weak link in the group. But that didn't mean he was completely out of it. He was healing, sort of. With time he would be able to heal. And he wasn't going to let them fight this alone. This whole mess was his fault no matter what timeline they were in. This was his chance to fix it.

_It wasn't your fault, kiddo_ , Gabriel sent him, his mind voice gentle. _You were manipulated by pros_.

_That does not matter._

_It does._

_No, Gabriel, it does not. This is my mess and I need to make sure that it is cleaned up._

There was the faint hint of an idea tickling at the back of Sam's mind and he wasn't quite sure how he managed it, but he pushed it back far enough that he knew Gabriel wouldn’t be able to sense it. He didn't want his bonded to know what he was thinking about. Because there was a small part of Sam that was insisting he knew a way to stop this. A way that he knew Gabriel and the others weren’t going to like.

A disgusted sound from Dean interrupted Sam's thoughts and he looked up in enough time to watch as his brother shoved up off the couch and stormed away from them. Sam recognized the temper in Dean's body language. He'd seen it plenty of times before. The only difference was that he could _feel_ it this time as well. He could feel how angry Dean was and how scared and worried too. It was a cocktail of emotions that left Sam's stomach churning ever so slightly.

There was a large part of Sam that wanted to cringe and curl up against Gabriel and hide from any display of temper. But there was another part, a part that had showed up after their bonding – after Sam had learned that this was real, they were all real – and that part was getting just a little bigger as he sat there and watched his big brother storm over to the door that led to the backyard and as he yanked that door open and slammed it shut behind him.

Bobby made to get up, probably to go stop him, but Gabriel waved a hand at him. “Let him cool off. I've got a bit of the property included in the wards. He'll be safe out there. He gets close, I'll go nab him.”

“He should not be alone.” Castiel said, his grace colored with worry while he looked over to the door Dean had just left through.

Sam agreed with him. Dean really shouldn't be alone at the moment. But... Castiel wasn't who he needed.

A little tendril of fear twisted through Sam's stomach. He used his best efforts to push it down and force it away. Dean had been trying everything he could to help Sam since this whole thing had started, even going so far as to trust a trickster he hated, and he'd done it all for Sam. The least Sam could do was push down his own fears to help his brother in return.

Turning, Sam brushed his nose against the side of Gabriel's face, nuzzling in for a moment in a gesture that felt wonderful and soothing, but nowhere near as wonderful as the way their graces nuzzled together inside the bond. “ _I will be right back_.” Sam said lowly.

“You sure, Sammy?” Thought, but not said, was the fear that this would be too much for Sam.

Sam nodded against Gabriel's cheek. “ _I am_.”

“You want one of us to come translate?”

This time Sam managed a small little smile. He didn't need words to communicate with his brother.

A second later Sam was carefully pushing up to his feet and then making his way out of the house and towards his brother. It was hard to walk away from Gabriel; the only thing that really made it okay was that he could still feel the archangel inside of him with every step he took, his bonded's grace there inside of him, a very part of him now. That gave him the strength and courage he needed to keep moving.

It took only a moment after he was outside before Sam found Dean. He wasn't that far away from the house. Just a little ways down the yard, by the tree line. He stood there staring off into the distance with his hands shoved down into his pockets and tension coming off of him in waves.

Sam made himself ignore the way his stomach jumped at the sigh and he forcibly reminded himself _This is real. This isn't the Cage and he's not going to hurt me. This is Dean and this is real. Dean won't hurt me_.

Chanting that over and over, he made his way to his brother.

Dean looked up in surprise when Sam joined him. Sam didn't say anything, didn't make any attempt to try and say something to him. He just flashed a small ghost of a smile as he came to a stop at dean's side. Then he mimicked his brother's pose - hands in his pockets, staring off into the distance.

The thing a lot of people didn’t realize about Dean was that he would talk about things; it just had to be done in the right circumstances. Sam had learned a long time ago how to use that. One of the things that worked best was to simply be quiet and wait. Whether it was sitting on the Impala drinking beers and watching the stars, or hanging out in the car with no music, or standing somewhere like this side by side with nothing to interrupt them – always, the silence would eventually get to Dean and he wouldn't be able to resist talking.

Now was no different.

“I can't hide out here, Sammy.” Dean said softly, never looking away from whatever he was staring at. “I just, I can't. There are people out there dying so the seals can be broken. How can I hide out here knowing that that's out there happening? I'm not built like that. We weren't raised like that.”

No, they hadn't been raised like that. Their father would roll over in his grave – so to speak – if he knew that they were hiding out while innocents were out there dying. Then again, Sam couldn't help but think that his father would freak out even more if he knew what Sam had become – and that Dean hadn't stopped him. Hadn't taken him out before it started.

Dean let out a soft sound that might've been a sigh. His shoulders slumped a little. “I don't know what I'm doing, man. I don't. This whole thing, it's a mess. I just... I don't know what the hell to do.”

Sam nodded his understanding but continued to stay silent. Even if he'd been able to speak in English, he wouldn't have said anything. Dean didn't need the words right now. He just needed an ear.

After another moment of quiet, Dean shook his head. “I can't stay here, Sammy. But I'm not stupid. I know I can't go running out there, either. What kind of chance do we stand against them? That dick back there is right – there's just the five of us. How are we supposed to fight this?”

_How can we not_? Sam wanted to ask him.

He didn't have to, though. Dean took care of that himself. “We can't just give up though. I mean, there's no one else out there who can fight this, is there? It's just us.” Dean let out a slightly bitter sounding laugh. “God, the world is screwed.”

Leaning in just a little, Sam let his shoulder bump against Dean's. It was a silent reminder that he wasn't alone here. Sam was right beside him. And, if he had his way, that was where he'd always be. _I'll be here_ , Sam promised with that gesture. _I got your back_.

The little smile that Dean turned his way told him that his brother was still good at reading his gestures as he'd always been. He bumped his shoulder back. “Thanks, Sammy.”

They would do what they'd always done. They would fight with everything they could and everything they had. Even if they were doomed, they would fight. They were Winchesters. It was all they knew how to do.

They would fight, and they would win – no matter the costs to themselves.


	15. Chapter 15

Strange as it may have sounded to others, the next few days felt to Sam like they were more difficult than the days that had come before. Now that he knew he was really here, that he was out of the Cage, everything seemed so much – harder. During one of his late nights where his nightmares woke him up he tried to find the words to make it make sense to Gabriel. “ _The Cage was – horrible. More horrible than anything I have ever known. But, it was familiar. It made sense._ ” Sam said softly, his face pressed in against Gabriel’s neck. It was one of Sam’s favorite places to be. He could feel the archangel’s wings around him and they made him feel safe. “ _This… this is real. You are all real. You are real and I am actually here and I do not know how to deal with that. I cannot predict you all the way I could down there. I do not know what to expect. It makes it… hard._ ”

That wasn’t the hardest part, though. What was hardest was how desperately he found himself missing Lucifer, and even Michael, and how little he knew anyone around him would like it if they knew that.

Sam hadn’t yet found a way to explain to everyone what the Cage was really like. He knew Gabriel had a general idea; he’d been in Sam’s head, he’d seen his nightmares, he’d heard Sam call for Lucifer. But he didn’t push. He didn’t ask Sam questions that the hunter wasn’t yet ready to answer.

Talking about the Cage was still too hard for Sam – his soul wasn’t yet healed enough for that. They found that out three days after their self-imposed exile, when Sam, Gabriel, Dean and Castiel were eating breakfast – Bobby was down in the library –and they were discussing their options. Well, more like they were arguing.

From his spot against Gabriel’s side, Sam was mostly watching the conversation, not really inputting much. The night had been a long one and he was still tired. The only reason he was out here was because Gabriel insisted that he eat something.

He didn’t really start paying attention until he heard Castiel cut into Dean and Gabriel’s argument to say “We are all missing a very important fact here.” The seraph told them.

All eyes went to him. “Oh yeah?” Dean asked. “And what’s that, Cas?”

Even as the blue eyes moved to him, Sam knew. He knew what was coming. Castiel’s eyes landed on him and Sam found himself pinned by the angel’s stare.

Both Gabriel and Dean immediately began to protest. “Oh, no. Hell no!” Dean exclaimed, at the same time that Gabriel pulled Sam in closer and growled out a low “ _Castiel_.”

Ignoring the two completely, Castiel continued to stare at Sam. “I understand this is hard for you, Sam. But you have already lived through this. You are our best source of information. What you know may prove invaluable to our cause.”

“ _I do not know how I can help, Castiel._ ” Sam said slowly. He pressed himself just slightly closer to Gabriel, yet he kept his eyes on the seraph. Castiel was right, he knew. Sam was their best source of information. He’d lived through the Apocalypse already. He knew some of the playbook that the angels were working from. But, things were different now than they were in his time. “ _My time was different. I did not stop last time. I killed Lilith and released Lucifer onto the world._ ”

“How did you evade the angels once Lucifer was free?”

“ _Idiotic luck_.” Sam answered promptly. Off to the side, he heard Gabriel murmur the translation to Dean, who snorted. Sam shrugged at Castiel. “ _You branded our ribs with Enochian warding symbols that kept us hidden from the sight of angels. It allowed us a measure of safety. Otherwise, we mostly kept moving, kept hunting. It was all we could do. Even so, they still caught up with us once or twice._ ” Memories drifted in with those words. Memories of Zachariah throwing them into an alternate reality where they weren’t hunters. Zachariah stand there, one hand on their mother, smirking at them. Dean, in the beautiful room. Adam. _Adam_.

Every single part of Sam froze. _Adam_. How could he have forgotten about Adam?

His tension didn’t go unnoticed by the others. “Sammy?” Dean sat forward, his eyes locked onto his brother.

“Adam.” Sam said slowly. The word came out in English, even if the ones that followed didn’t. “ _Gabriel, they have a backup plan for Dean. They have Adam._ ” With those words he sent an image over their link to Gabriel of Adam. He showed him Adam being resurrected, Adam arguing with them, Adam coming to the beautiful room – and then Adam as Michael. “Gabriel...”

“I got it, Sammy.” Gabriel's words were low and reassuring, but Sam could tell that the archangel wasn't entirely there. His thoughts were racing too fast for Sam to keep up with. When he spoke again, the two of them ignoring Castiel's low translations and explanations to Dean, Gabriel's voice was slow, his words carefully thought out. “I don't think that we need to worry about Adam quite yet. That's their backup plan if they can't get Dean to agree. And, unless you've got another brother out there somewhere, it shouldn’t be an issue.”

“ _Castiel said that they chose to use Adam because he was my brother and so their plan would still work. Not perfectly, but it would work for Michael to use him. Could the same not be done in reverse? Could they not choose to use him for Lucifer instead_?”

“As a vessel, maybe.” Gabriel agreed. He turned his head enough to look at Sam's face and his eyes were sad. “But not for the seals. Those, they need you guys for. You're the only one that can get him free without using the actual key.”

Sam let out a sigh of relief. “ _Then we are safe. So long as Lucifer remains in his Cage, he cannot release the Horsemen and the keys cannot be obtained_.”

“The Horsemen?” Castiel said. He had a curious look on his face that Sam privately thought made him look more constipated than thoughtful. It was interesting to see this version of Castiel again; the version of him before he'd started to fall, before he'd learned how to be human.

Realizing that apparently Castiel didn't know what he was talking about – which made sense because he hadn't in Sam's time, either, it had been Gabriel who'd given them that plan – Sam nodded at him. “ _They provided us with the key. It was how we got Lucifer back into his prison_.” A little tremor ran down Sam. “ _I...I said Yes, and I regained control_...” Not fast enough “... _and I threw us into the Cage. Michael tried to stop me and fell with us_.”

He could remember seeing it all. The graveyard all around them, the Impala there nearby. Dean, slumped against the car, bleeding from what Sam's hands had done. Castiel, gone, exploded with a snap of Lucifer’s (Sam's) fingers. Bobby, lying broken on the ground. And then...

The fall. God, the fall. It had felt endless. Dark and hot and pressing him down, down, forcing him into the prison he would rot inside of, a prison that would show him the true meaning of the words torture.

Sam didn't realize that his breathing had changed or that his body was starting to shake. The memories were sliding in with just those simple words and he couldn't fight against them. A whimper slid past his lips and he tried to curl himself inward. He didn't notice Gabriel holding him, pulling him almost into his lap, and he didn’t hear anyone's voices. All he could hear were the screams of the furious archangels as he drew them down with him and damned them all. The warmth of the bond was the only thing that kept him grounded. Sam latched onto it, clinging desperately to it as he tried to fight his way back out of the memories that were dragging him down.

It took almost a half an hour for Gabriel to coax Sam out of those memories. Eventually the archangel had to shut them away inside of their room and curl himself around Sam in their bed. He stroked gentle hands over him and whispered soothing words until Sam finally relaxed once more.

So the team learned not to talk about the Cage. What Sam had told them had given them quite enough information anyways.

It was definitely enough information for Dean, who spent the rest of the day hiding out in the garage that was attached to Gabriel’s home, working on the Impala and trying not to smash his tools against the car to let out some of his rage at the thought that his brother had said Yes to Lucifer and thrown himself into the goddamned _Cage_ – and the thought that apparently Dean’s future self had been idiotic enough to let something like that happen.

For the rest of the day after that the group had stayed apart. They only came back together again when it was time to eat. But the others had quite the surprise when Gabriel came to join them for dinner – without Sam.

“Where’s my brother at?” Dean asked, looking behind Gabriel like maybe Sam was going to just appear.

Gabriel made his way over to the fridge, looking not the least bit bothered by the fact that his usual attachment was nowhere in sight. “Calm down, bucko.” He said as he opened the fridge and leaned in. When he straightened back up, a bottle in hand, he shot Dean an amused look. “Even your brother's entitled to some alone time, don't you think?”

“Usually he's stuck to you like glue.”

That earned him an eyebrow wiggle and a dirty leer that had Dean groaning, Bobby rolling his eyes, and Castiel watching them with a hint of confusion.

Laughing, Gabriel carried the bottle he'd grabbed over to the counter, reaching in next to get a cup out of the cupboard. “Relax, Deano. Your brother's fine. He just wanted some privacy. He's trying – really trying here. Sometimes that means he's gonna need a little bit of space.”

“Sam's always needed quiet time to process things.” Bobby said. He was sitting at the table with Dean and reached forward to serve himself a second helping of the pot of gumbo that was on the table. He shot Dean a look, not the least bit perturbed by the other hunter's scowl. Bobby just scowled right back at him. “Leave him alone, boy. He's safe here. Don't go crowdin' him when he's out there thinkin'. You know it's what he needs.”

“He needs not to be alone.” Dean grumbled.

Gabriel brought his drink over to the table and dropped himself down in the seat at the end, leaning back a bit and kicking both legs up to cross over one another and rest on the corner of the table. “He's never completely alone.” The archangel said, tapping his temple to remind them of the bond the two shared, a bond Dean still wasn't pleased with. “An besides, he _does_ need to be alone sometimes, kiddo. He hasn't had that chance for a lot longer than you can comprehend. He needs to be able to sit alone and just enjoy the fact sometimes that he's free and he's here.”

It wasn't hard to see just how little Dean liked this. Then again, it wasn't hard to see how little he liked any of this. He wanted to be able to take care of his brother and this was one situation that didn't really allow him to do that all that much. All he could really do was be there when Sam wanted him and make sure that his brother knew that he was always going to be there for him. Otherwise, most of it was left in the hands of the archangel to handle, and that wasn't something that sat right with Dean. Taking care of Sam had always been _his_ job. Handing over those reins to someone else felt wrong in so many different ways.

Dean's stream of thoughts was broken when suddenly Gabriel swore and his feet dropped down from the table to land on the ground with a thud. All eyes lifted and locked on him, only to find him staring off into the distance with an empty gaze.

“What is it?” Dean demanded. He dropped his spoon back into his bowl and watched Gabriel carefully, every inch of him tense and on alert. “What's going on?”

It took a moment for Gabriel to answer. “Sam blocked our bond.” He answered absently. Then, lower “How on earth did he do that? He shouldn't be able to!”

“He blocked your bond?” Castiel repeated. It only made the humans more nervous to hear how surprised Castiel sounded.

Gabriel's hands came down to rest on the table and it was obvious that he was concentrating on something. His expression was completely human in that moment, from the tightness of his lips to the little furrow between his brows. Then his eyes went wide and his mouth dropped open on a little gasp. Amber eyes lifted and finally focused back on the here and now, staring at them all with stunned disbelief. “He's gone.”

Dean swore lowly. “What do you mean, he's gone?”

“What do you think?” Gabriel snapped. HIs whole body looked tense and, though the humans couldn't see it, his wings were open high and wide and twitching with the need to fly, to hunt down his bondmate. “He's gone off the property. With the bond blocked, I can't sense him. He's shutting me out.”

“What the hell is that boy doin'?” Bobby said lowly.

Gabriel shook his head. His hands tightened on the edge of the table and his gaze turned just slightly haunted. “I don't know. But I doubt it's anything good.”

* * *

While his friends sat worrying at the dinner table, Sam was far, far away from them and already traveling further. Figuring out how to travel like this hadn't been that easy. It seemed need based, at least the way he'd done it in the past. Well, Sam had never had a greater need than the one he did now.

His first 'flight' or 'jump' or whatever it was took him from Gabriel's property to Bobby's. It was the place he knew the best, somewhere that made him feel safe, and when he'd focused on somewhere safe away from Gabriel, that had been where his mind sent him. But Bobby's place wasn't where he needed to be for this. It wasn't right for what he wanted to do.

It took a few more tries for Sam to finally get to someplace that suited his purposes. A few times of closing his eyes and letting go of his grace and letting that need fill him. A need to be away from everyone, far away from people. A need to be somewhere remote where no one had a chance of being hurt by what he was about to do.

Eventually Sam ended up here, in this remote frozen wasteland. It was just snow and ice as far as the eye could see. Kind of fitting, he felt.

Sam didn't feel the cold like he once did. Even as the wind blew, it didn't cut through him, didn't freeze him as he remembered it doing long ago. He shivered under his coat, yes, but the sensation brought a small smile to his lips. In a way it kind of felt like being home for the first time since he'd been freed from the Cage. The cold reminded him so much of Lucifer's grace. It wasn't the same - nothing could quite simulate that feeling. But it was close enough that it made him smile. He remembered feeling the chill of Lucifer's grace curling around him, cold and yet not, wonderful and amazing and so full of a different kind of warmth. And he remembered Michael’s grace as well, warm to Lucifer's cold, curling in as well until Sam felt like he was just perfect right there in the middle of them.

It felt fitting that it was here that Sam began the plan that had been building in the back of his mind now for days. Closing his eyes, Sam spread out his arms and tilted his head back, tilting his face up towards the sky.

For a long moment there was only the sound of the wind blowing around him. Sam blew out a careful breath and lowered his hands, straightening his back and opening his eyes once more.

There in front of him stood a very familiar visage. Sam sucked in a sharp breath, the cold of the air cutting straight down into his lungs, his wide eyes locked on the face right in front of him. “Adam.” Then, because he could see beyond the vessel, see the grace and the wings and the burning brightness of that light inside, he whispered another name with love and reverence. “ _Michael_.”

“Honestly, I must admit you’re the last person I expected to be calling me.” Michael said. He stood there without flinching under the wind. It was like a blow to the gut to see him standing there. Sam’s mind kept seeing him down in the Cage. He remembered the way the dark had tried to creep in, how it’d tried to dim the grace of two of the oldest archangels, and how their light had fought back so valiantly. Out here, there was none of that. This was Michael as he was – as he’d been before the apocalypse. He was bright and beautiful.

Sam licked dry lips and tried to remember why he came here. He had to fight to keep from leaping at the archangel for an embrace he knew this version of him wouldn’t give. This wasn’t his Michael – not the one that he cared for and who had cared for him. Curling his hands tight into his pockets, Sam tried to find the words he’d been building, the ones he’d planned just for this. The ones he’d worked very, very hard to be able to say in English, practicing in the shower where Gabriel hadn’t been able to hear him. “We need to talk and I didn’t want there to be an audience.” His words were slow and hesitant, not easy for him to say. His tongue kept wanting to switch back to Enochian. Unable to resist, he forgot his speech long enough to focus on one other important topic, though the words were slightly broken since he hadn’t had the chance to practice them like he had the others. “I did not think you raised Adam yet. How did you do so quickly?”

“We did it the instant you two disappeared. We needed to be prepared.” Michael tilted his head and he watched Sam curiously. There wasn’t open threat on him; he’d never been really all that threatening towards Sam. More like, Sam had been a bug not worthy of his time, not until Sam had dragged them down into the Cage. Then Sam had glimpsed the temper that sat underneath that calm. “What is it that had you praying so desperately to speak with me, Sam Winchester? I confess I’m both surprised and confused by this. I almost sent my other angels before I decided I would come myself to see. You… intrigue me. There is something, different about you.”

 _This is the right thing to do. This is the right thing to do._ Sam reminded himself of that, over and over. Then he carefully let go of the shields that Gabriel had been teaching him to make, the ones that the trickster had used to hide his own angelic status for so long now. The instant that Sam let go of them, he saw Michael actually startle backwards, his wings flaring out in surprise and then lifting in a defensive position. “ _What are you_?”

“ _What you have made me._ ” Sam said carefully, slipping back into Enochian just as he’d planned. He kept his spine stiff and refused to back down. _This is the right thing to do._ “ _I am not from your timeline, Michael. I come from a different time, a different future. One that may still yet come to pass. I come to make sure that it does not. But to do that, I need you to trust me._ ” He lifted one hand and held it out towards the oldest of all angels, letting a hint of his grace sit there where he knew Michael would be able to see it. Their eyes met over the short distance between them and Sam let the archangel stare at him and down into him. He let himself be seen, hiding nothing but his bond with Gabriel, a bond he was still sheltering. _I am sorry, Gabriel. I do what I have to do to keep you and everyone else safe. Please, forgive me._

After a long pause in which only the whistling of the wind was heard, Michael finally spoke. “Why should I not smite you where you stand simply for being the abomination that you are?”

“ _Because you are curious about what I have to say and why I have grace in me_.” Sam said easily. Then he smiled just the slightest bit and dangled the one prize he knew would seal the deal. “ _And because when we are done, I will do what you want – I will kill Lilith and set Lucifer free_.”


	16. Chapter 16

Michael looked stunned by Sam’s final words. They rang in the empty air around them and Sam just stood there, letting his words sink in, letting the archangel in front of him gauge his sincerity. This was the big moment – the one that Sam had been thinking about in the private place inside of his mind where he’d learned to keep Gabriel away. This plan was the only thing that Sam could think of to keep those he loved safe. _All_ of them.

“Why would you agree to that?”

The question wasn’t surprising. It was one that Sam had prepared for. “ _That is part of what I want to tell you_.” Taking a deep breath, Sam steeled his resolve. This was going to be one of the hardest things he’d ever done. Yet, at the same time, so easy. How could it be anything but easy while he was staring at Michael’s beautiful grace right there in front of him, so familiar and yet not? Gathering up his own grace, Sam added a little more to his outstretched hand, watching as Michael took a small step back. “ _I am not strong enough to hurt you_.” Sam reminded him. “ _But what I have to say, it is easier to show than to tell_.”

There was a moment of quiet as Michael stared at him. Then his own grace cautiously reached out.

When the two touched hands, touched graces, everything inside of Sam flashed hot and white.

This was their only hope.

Sam pulled up the memories he had tried so hard not to think of, the memories of both the good and the bad, and poured them down into the connection between them. Everything else fell away as Sam played it all back, from Lucifer being free right up to his swan dive into the Cage, and then beyond, to the things he’d shared with no one else.

The world faded away as the memories came flooding through him.

* * *

Gabriel was frantic as he paced through his house, paying almost no attention to his body’s movements. Every bit of his focus was turned inward to the bond that should tell him everything about Sam. How he was feeling, what was going on, _where he was_. Sam had blocked the thing so damn perfectly it left Gabriel with nothing. _Nothing_! He couldn’t sense Sam and it had his grace screaming inside of him with the wrongness of it. He needed to find his bondmate!

There was no doubt in Gabriel’s mind that Sam was in danger. The presence of Michael on the earth hadn’t gone unnoticed. His arrival had been the instant that Gabriel had moved from worried to straight up panic. The only thing that kept him from flying straight to Michael was the fact that his brother had shielded himself almost the instant he’d hit earth. Every supernatural being knew that Michael was on earth – but none of them knew where exactly on earth he was. _Dammit, Sam!_ Gabriel cursed loudly. _Where are you, kiddo? What have you done?_

None of the others were doing any better. Dean was pacing just as much as Gabriel was. Only Castiel and Bobby seemed still. Bobby, however, had already slammed down a shot and seemed just as lost as they were.  “What the hell is that idjit doing?”

“Saving us.” Gabriel spat out. The bond felt so empty with Sam blocking it. “He’s saving us.”

It was the only clear thing that Gabriel could get. Little things he’d noticed the past few days were starting to add together, things he’d noticed but discounted or had assumed were because of something else. They were coming together now and painting a picture that made Gabriel feel sick. Somewhere out there he was sure Sam was with Michael trying to do something huge and utterly _stupid_ to try and save them all from a mess that the youngest Winchester still felt was so much his fault. _I should’ve noticed sooner. I should’ve realized he was planning something! I should’ve_ stopped _him!_

“Saving us?” Dean repeated. “How the hell is he _saving_ us by throwing himself away to Michael?”

When Castiel and Gabriel had announced the oldest archangel’s presence on earth, not a one of them had doubted that that’s where Sam was.

Gabriel was going to answer – he had a scathing reply already building on his lips – when suddenly the bond between him and Sam was flung wide open. Wider than it’d ever been open before. There was enough time to suck in a breath and them Gabriel was dragged down into Sam’s grace and the onslaught of memories that were pouring out of him. Gabriel felt his body drop to the ground even as he let out a cry, his true voice ringing in it, his whole being inundated with all of Sam’s years before and during Hell in one fell swoop.

* * *

It felt like a piece of Sam's grace was being ripped out of him. The pain of it tore through him, left him gasping for enough air to try and scream, only he couldn't get the air in, couldn't do anything but lean in as the grace finally yanked itself free. Half of his energy seemed to go with it. The pain and the memories faded away and Sam slumped forward, only to be caught up by a pair of arms that easily held him and gathered him close.

Sam felt the cold breeze blow across his face and almost freeze in some spots. He hadn't realized until then that he was crying. But even as he realized it, the arms brought him closer and something warm was brushing over his cheek, wiping the tears away. “Samuel.” The voice murmured to him. It was all around him, inside him, ringing through every inch of his grace. Hearing it brought on more tears because Sam knew that voice, knew that tone, and it was terrifying just how much that felt like part of _home_. “Oh, Samuel. Little one. You're okay. You're _okay_.”

Sam shuddered and tried to burrow in closer. He felt Michael’s grace around him and it wasn't the strange sensation that he'd been feeling when Michael first showed up in this frozen place. This... this was like the Michael he knew. The one he'd loved and who had loved him, who had helped to care for him. “ _You remember_.” Sam said softly.

“I remember it all.” That hand wiped away more of Sam's tears and then tenderly cupped his cheek. “I'm so sorry that hurt you at the end. A bit of my grace came back to me. I remember it all, Sam.”

“ _So it is... it is you_?”

The infliction on that last word didn't go unnoticed. Michael's thumb rubbed lightly at Sam's cheekbone and his affection was easily felt in their still mingled grace. “It is and it isn't. I am not the one that lived there with you, no. But the grace that came back to me, the sharing we've done – all those memories are mine now. I remember it all as if I truly did live it, and that is close enough to the same. I have not just your memories, but my own, carried in that bit of grace. I remember what happened and I remember who I became, thanks to you, Sam.”

“ _Thank God_.” Sam breathed out. He dropped his head forward, his forehead coming to rest against Michael's – Adam's – shoulder. “ _Oh, thank God_.”

“No, Samuel. Thank _you._ ” One firm hand stroked up and down Sam's back soothingly and for just a little while the hunter lost himself in the feel of Michael's grace around him, cradling him, warming him as it'd once done. The memories that he'd shared with Michael had been replayed for Sam as well and he was barely keeping himself together from it. Being with Michael after that kind of pain was normal for Sam. It was what he was used to. Michael and Lucifer, a protective barrier between him and the horrors of the cage. The only thing they were missing right now was Lucifer.

No.... not just Lucifer. There was something else that was missing here as well. Something that Sam found himself wanting more and more with each passing second.

The bond inside of Sam pulsed and flared brightly when Sam reached to it. He reached out to it, to that place inside of him where Gabriel was, and felt his bondmate reach back. What he found had him gasping. Gabriel was hurt. Gabriel was in _pain_.

“Come, Samuel.” Michael murmured against his hair. He drew Sam up, pushing his hair back from his face so that they could meet eyes once more, actually looking at one another. He smiled at the young hunter in a caring sort of way, so different from only moments ago. “I’m afraid my brother caught the backlash of our joining through the bond. Let’s go make sure he’s okay. Then I can thank him properly for caring for you, and maybe yell a little at him for letting us think for so long that he was gone.”

* * *

For the first time that Gabriel could ever remember, he didn’t care about who was around him. He didn’t care what any of them saw when they looked at him. Grief and pain rocked through the archangel and had him bowing down low as he knelt there on the hardwood floors. His hands were curled tight, fingers digging into the wood until they broke through the other side, and he didn’t care, he didn’t give a damn about how he looked or what the others saw or _any of it_. His grace was crying out inside of him and the pain of it was almost too much to bear. _Sam_ , he cried out, fingers getting tighter and tighter. _Oh, Sammy._

The things Gabriel had seen, everything that he had felt, he would never forget. He thought he knew pain. He thought he knew torture. As an archangel, as a pagan god, he’d seen and done plenty. He’d survived so much. Yet none of it had cut him as deep as all the things he’d just witnessed through their bond. The pain and guilt that Sam had lived with after setting Lucifer free, everything he’d went through with Famine, the amazing and magnificent courage that he’d shown when he’d stood there and said Yes to the Devil in the hopes of stopping what Sam felt was all his fault, the agony of gaining back control from the brightest of all the archangels – and then, the Cage.

It was too much. It was all too much and Gabriel couldn’t do anything about it. His bondmate, his precious Sam, this being he’d somehow come to love without ever realizing it, had gone through all of that, had lived it and somehow _survived_ , and still – still! – he was out there right now trying to find a way to save them all, risking himself once more for a world who would never know what he’d done, who would never be able to appreciate or understand the sacrifices that he’d made for them.

Gabriel ignored those around him and dropped his head down to the floor, gripping tightly to the fistfuls of wood he now had that were crushing to dust in his hands.

Then suddenly something was there inside of him. The bond, which had felt raw after that onslaught, was filled with a light Gabriel would know anywhere. One that was just as much a part of him now as his own.

There was a tug at the wards around the property and Gabriel recklessly let them go, shoving himself up and using his own grace to break a hole in them the size of a semi, letting in the light he wanted more than anything else – not caring about the light that followed. All he cared about was his Sam. Sam, who was flying into the house with Michael right on his heels. Sam, who was right there, who was staring at him with a tearstained face, rushing towards him, and Gabriel opened his arms right as Sam got there. He caught him easily as his bondmate dropped down to him. The two of them wrapped around one another with bodies, grace, and wings, and Gabriel had no idea which of them was crying or laughing, or if maybe they both were. All he cared about was that Sam was here, right here in his lap, wrapping up around him and holding him, and Gabriel could hold him back just as tightly. “Sam, Sam, Sam” he chanted his name over and over. He could feel Sam’s lips against his neck, his face buried in his favorite spot, mouthing words of his own. Gabriel easily translated the Enochian and felt his grace soar at the love that was being sworn to him.

Gabriel threaded a hand into Sam’s hair and yanked his head back so that they could see one another’s faces. “You stupid, idiotic human.” The words were meant to be fierce, only they were broken by the tears and the laughter and so much damn emotion. There were so many things under them, so many things that Gabriel couldn’t say out loud. Those things flowed across their bond and he knew Sam was getting them, just as he knew they probably didn’t make much sense, just this flow of thoughts and grief and _Don’t you ever do that again you idiot love you don’t leave me don’t do that I’m so sorry I love you Don’t you leave me._

Grace and soul pressed back against Gabriel and wove a promise and an apology all rolled into one. _I am so sorry,_ Sam swore, his apology oozing from his words. _I had to do this, Gabriel. I had to try and save him. And I knew you would all stop me. But I had to, can you see? They saved me. I had to try and save them._

 _I know_. Gabriel leaned in, pulling Sam’s head close until their foreheads rested together.

As the two slowly began to calm, Gabriel finally began to pay attention to the other grace in the room, and also to the reactions of those around them. He could feel Dean and Bobby on the far side of the room, sheltered by Castiel’s grace. The little seraph was standing between them and Michael as if he could stand a chance there, ready to do anything he could to keep them safe, and it was heartwarming.

He knew now from Sam's memories just how things had been for Castiel. How low he'd Fallen and how far he'd been willing to let himself go for these hunters. Seeing a shadow of it now only made Gabriel want to smile. He reached out with his grace, stroking soothingly at Castiel’s, and offered the seraph a smile. “It's okay, Cassie. It's safe.”

From behind Castiel, Dean made a low sound of disbelief. Then the hunter stepped forward, reaching Castiel's side but either unwilling or not allowed to go any further. “What's going on here?” His eyes flashed up to Michael, who had stood silently this entire time, almost as if guarding the two on the floor, and then Dean's gaze went down to Sam, whose face was still wet with tears. “Sammy, you okay? Did they hurt you?”

Sam drew in a shaky breath and then blew it back out slowly. “I am...fine.” The words stunned almost everyone in the room. They were a bit broken, shaky, and most definitely unsure, but they were in English. English! Then Sam smiled and his voice slipped back into Enochian, obviously the language he was still more comfortable with. “ _Everything is okay. Please, Castiel, let him know I am unharmed, and that Michael is not here to cause harm._ ”

The rest of the room was quiet as Castiel translated for Dean and Bobby both. The two hunters exchanged a quick look and then Bobby was moving forward as well. He, too, looked Sam over just the same as Dean had, obviously trying to gauge the sincerity of Sam's words, to see for himself if he was actually hurt. But then he brought his gaze to Gabriel. When Gabriel gave a small nod, the older hunter nodded back. “I think maybe it's time we all sat down and had a talk. Seems like there’s a lot goin' on here the rest of us don't know about.”

“I believe that would be wise, Robert Singer.” Michael agreed, speaking up for the first time.

It took a moment for Sam and Gabriel to get up off the floor. Neither one of them wanted to let go of the other. In the end, Gabriel opted to pull Sam in so that Sam's legs were around the archangel's waist. Then he got his hands underneath him and just hefted, blessing the archangel strength that allowed him to hold Sam there even as he pushed up off the ground. Sam didn't seem to mind. He didn't seem to care how ridiculous they must've looked. He just clung to Gabriel with arms and legs and held on like he never wanted to let go.

Yet, it wasn't just Gabriel he wanted near. There was a part of him that seemed to almost constantly keep track of Michael. When Gabriel started to set him down and it looked like Michael might step away, a pained sound from Sam had him turning back. A smile curled Michael’s lips and Gabriel got his first glimpse of a brother he hadn't seen since long before the Fall. One who held no anger, no bitterness – just love. One of Michael's hands came out to smooth back a bit of Sam’s hair. “Calm, little one. I am not going anywhere.”

Gabriel looked up at his oldest brother and their eyes met over Sam's shoulder. A bit of Michael’s grace reached out and Gabriel didn’t hesitate to reach back. He would have hesitated before all of this. Before he’d seen Sam’s memories, seen the angel that the Cage had made his brother into. But he had seen what Michael had become in the end. He saw the being that Sam loved like another brother. The two let their grace mingle together for just a moment, a silent sharing of love, a grief for years lost, an apology for what they’d all gone through, and a promise of so much more. Once, all angels had spoken with grace, sharing everything. Nothing had been private. It’d been so long since Gabriel had felt that. Feeling it again now was amazing.

Then Sam reached out as well, slow and hesitant, and they welcomed him in easily, the three of them communing together in a way that was amazing and wonderful and so much like _home_.

In a moment there were going to have to be a lot of explanations and then they were going to have to make some plans. But for just this one second, just this one moment in time, Gabriel let himself have something that he hadn’t had in a long time.

_Family._


	17. Chapter 17

Even without his growing powers, it wasn’t hard for Sam to pick up on the stream of his brother’s thoughts as everyone once more sat down to have another of the talks that had become far too commonplace for them lately. Sam had known him for long enough, better than anyone else really, and he knew what that look on Dean’s face meant.

The older Winchester wasn’t the type to sit and talk this much. He wasn’t the ‘sharing and caring’ type and they’d been doing a lot of that lately. He’d done so much better than Sam had expected, really. He’d put up with a lot more than Sam had ever thought he would – and he’d done it all for Sam’s sake. He’d listened and waited and let others take charge of something that he considered _his_ responsibility. But apparently he’d reached the end of that tolerance. He was straightening up now and squaring his shoulders, feet firmly planted in the ground and arms crossed over his chest. It was a look Sam knew meant that Dean was done with this and was about to speak up and say his piece.

Sure enough, he spoke not a second later. “I’ve had enough of this.” Dean growled out at them. His words drew the attention of everyone, but the hunter didn’t flinch underneath all those stares. “I want some answers and I want them now. I’m tired of this back and forth bullshit that’s not getting us anywhere. Someone’s gonna explain what’s going on!”

“That was what we were planning on doing, Dean Winchester.” Michael said flatly. He sounded annoyed, though not truly angry – for which Sam was grateful. He had a feeling it was only for Sam’s sake that Michael wasn’t getting angry, though.

However, Gabriel had no such trouble getting short with Sam’s brother. “Stow your crap, Winchester. There’s a lot more important stuff than you and your need to be in charge right now.”

“Dean.” Sam spoke low and clear, knowing that his voice would grab his brother’s attention no matter what else was going on. When Dean’s eyes shot over to him, Sam took a deep breath and tried to make himself focus, make the words come that were still so hard for him. “Please… listen. It is.. long story.” The sentence was broken and Sam wasn’t quite sure that he’d gotten all the words right – they _felt_ right – but judging by the way Dean was looking at him, he must’ve at least managed to get his point across. This whole thing was one long story and Sam knew he was going to have a lot of explaining to do. He had to fight not to grit his teeth in frustration at the fact that he wouldn’t be able to sit and explain it all to Dean on his own. There was no way he would have enough English to be able to tell all of it to Dean and Bobby himself. He was going to have to either let everyone else tell the story for him or he was going to have to rely on them for translation. It was annoying. He just, he wanted to be able to _talk_. To tell Dean himself instead of relying on other people to tell his brother and hope that they’d be able to say things right and soothe him down the way he would need. None of them understood Dean like he did and they wouldn’t know the way to say or do things to make the older Winchester relax.

His broken words seemed to have done the job somewhat, though. Dean deflated just the slightest bit. His eyes, however, stayed a bit hard when they ran over the two archangels still pressed so close to Sam. He was held against Gabriel but he wasn’t moving entirely away from Michael, either. Right now he didn’t want to be far from either one of them.

 _It’ll be okay, Samshine._ Gabriel sent to him over their bond. His grace stroked soothingly over Sam’s, the two of the still twined together deeper than normal. _We’ll help you with this. Your brother will understand, I promise._

 _Will he?_ Sam drew in just a bit and tried to let Gabriel’s grace calm him down some. Even knowing what he did now, knowing that this was real and this was really his brother and Dean would _never_ hurt him, he couldn’t quite break out of the responses that the Cage had trained into him. Especially after going through all his memories like that again. That had brought to the surface things that Sam had been trying so hard to avoid thinking about.

He wasn’t the same person who’d first showed up and flinched every single time that someone’s voice turned angry. But he couldn’t help how he still tensed up when people got angry around him. It was too much a part of him, burned into his very soul. Especially with Dean. That made him a little ashamed of himself. He should know better. He should be able to tell the difference between the two. He should be able to look at this Dean and remember that this was his actual brother and Dean wouldn’t do anything that would hurt him like that. It was just… the Cage had liked to use Dean more than anyone else.

Sam was so caught up in thoughts and memories that he didn’t notice everyone finding their seats once more. Not until Gabriel and Michael both tugged him over to sit down.

 _I can do this,_ Sam thought to himself as he sat down with an archangel on either side of him. _I can do this. I can do this._ Over and over he repeated that mantra until he felt like he had some semblance of calm once more. Then he lifted his head and tried to smile over at Dean, who was sitting beside Castiel. “ _We seem to be doing this quite often, brother._ ”

Castiel, wonderful being that he was, immediately translated the words for Sam, who was eternally grateful for it. The little nod that Castiel gave let Sam know that the seraph was willing to play this part. That made things much easier. He knew he could trust the literal-minded angel to translate him word for word without any deviations. It would make this easier.

Well, that had been Sam’s hope, at least. He really should’ve known that nothing was going to make this conversation any easier. Because there was a quite a lot he had to say, quite a lot he didn’t feel _ready_ to say. It had to come out, though, whether he liked it or not. And he couldn’t force anyone else to tell that story for him. “ _To make you understand everything, I need to go back quite a ways in my timeline. I need to go back to the beginning. Otherwise it will not make any sort of sense._ ”

Drawing in a deep breath, Sam prepared to bare his soul for the second time today.

* * *

Telling the story of the apocalypse – an abridged one, of course – wasn’t easy. There were times he had to pause, times he had to lean in to Gabriel or Michael and accept the embrace from them just to settle himself down and find the courage to keep on talking. He didn’t leave anything out, though. There was no point. This was his chance to get everything out in the open and he was going to do it all right here and right now. After today, he didn't want to have to go through all of this again. This was just, it was too many times in a row. Seeing some of it in his dreams, then going and sharing it with Michael in a touching of grace – a communion, Gabriel explained to him – that had felt as real as if he'd lived much of it again, and now here, saying it all out loud.

Sam told them everything. When he finally got to the end and spoke of saying Yes to Lucifer, his voice cracked. Gabriel had to step in for him and take over the story.

Stunned was a mild word to describe the way that Bobby, Dean and Castiel were all looking at him. Their emotions were strong in the air around them and they were also written clearly on their faces. It wasn’t hard for Sam to see. He closed his eyes, not quite sure he could continue to look at them for the next part of this. He didn't know if he could look at their faces as he told them what had happened to him and the things that had been done, the ways that he'd broken. How could he? He hated just how much they'd seen so far. All the ways that they'd seen him break.

Shuddering a little, Sam curled his hands in his lap, gripping at his pants. There was no putting this off - he had to get it done. “ _The Cage_...” His voice broke a little and he had to clear his throat just to get the words out. “ _The Cage is not as you think of it being_.”

“Perhaps it is best if I explain this.” Michael cut in. He settled a soothing hand on Sam’s shoulder and offered him a swell of grace, the angelic equivalent of a hug, before he looked back at the others. “The Cage was built to contain Lucifer, as you no doubt know. But it was built to contain him alone. It is powerful, yes, but it was tailored to my brother specifically. To his grace. When Sam jumped into the Cage with both my brother and myself, that put two archangels in a place meant to house one, and one human stuck with us.”

“Think of it like being a leaf in a hurricane.” Gabriel added in helpfully.

Sam nodded. That was a good analogy. He'd sort of felt like that sometimes. Like a leaf being blown around by a hurricane, tossed and turned this way and that, never able to do anything else but go along for the ride. It had left him feeling ripped and battered and broken in so many different ways. And that had been before the Cage had started to reach out for him.

Another little shudder ran down Sam's body. He felt Gabriel's grace wrapping around him in an attempt to keep the memories back and he appreciated more than he had words to admit to. _Sam, this is enough,_ Gabriel sent to him. _You can finish this another day. You don't have to do all of this at once, kiddo._

 _Yes, I do_. Sam absolutely had to. _If I stop now, I do not know that I will ever be able to make myself continue, Gabriel._

He heard Gabriel make a soft sound and then the archangel was leaning in to press his face against Sam's hair and kiss his head gently.

The little gesture gave Sam just a bit of strength. Enough to keep talking, even if it wasn't quite enough for him to actually be able to look up at them all. “ _In the Cage, Michael and Lucifer...there was not a lot they could do. It was either fight or talk – and they did both_.”

“Sometimes at the same time.” Michael supplied with an edge of rueful amusement.

Sam smiled and nodded. “ _Yes_.”

“Because of our fighting, I'm ashamed to admit it took us a while to figure out what the Cage was doing to Samuel.”

“You're talkin' about the Cage like it's alive.” Bobby said slowly.

“In a sense, yes, it is. It is designed to torture, Robert. For Lucifer, it was designed to hold him in there, to keep him there and alive, unable to escape the reality of Hell around him.” Michael explained. “With the powers of the Cage stretched thin to contain two archangels as well as a human, it made its control over Lucifer and myself minimal, but it was still strong enough to reach out for Sam. It tried to hold him there, unable to escape Hell around him, but instead of forcing him to witness actual Hell it seemed to instead force him to witness the Hell inside of his mind. It would lure him to the corners of the Cage and trap him inside a dream inside of his mind. Dreams that tortured him with as much skill as any of Hell’s personal torturers.”

“You’re telling us it wasn’t you two in there with him that did this, it was the _Cage itself_?” Dean repeated. There was skepticism that was easy to hear in every single word of that sentence. It was practically dripping off the last two words.

Sam knew he had to step in here. Dean would never believe any of it coming from Michael or even Gabriel. He needed to hear it from Sam, even if he still had to listen to a translation of it. But to do this, Sam had to open his eyes, had to pull up out of his head and look over at his brother despite how little he wanted to. Seeing the grief there on Dean’s face, the lines of pain around his eyes and the tense line to his jaw, it was like a blow. Sam hadn’t wanted to do this to him. He hadn’t wanted to hurt Dean like this. _I’m so tired of always hurting him._ “Dean.” He used his brother’s name to bring Dean’s eyes off of Michael and to him. The pain he saw in them only made Sam hurt all the more. Shoving that down, he cleared his throat and tried to think of the words to say to make his brother understand. “ _I know it does not make sense to you. But Michael is telling the truth._ ”

“Are you sure, Sam?” Dean asked, once Castiel ha translated Sam’s words. “Are you really sure? I mean, dude, you were pretty messed up when you got back…” Unspoken was the thought that maybe Sam had been messed up enough that he might be remembering things _wrong_.

“ _I am sure._ ” Sam lifted one slightly shaky hand and rubbed it over his face. He ignored everyone and just focused right on Dean; he needed him to understand. He _needed_ it. “ _I know the difference between the pain caused by them and the pain caused by the Cage._ ” Memories of Michael’s early rage pushed at Sam’s mind and he ruthlessly shoved them down. “ _If it was not for them, I would not be here. They did not do this to me, but it is because of them that I am here with you. They saved me. Lucifer would pull me out of the torture dreams and then, with Michael, they would piece me back together. They gave me grace when my soul started to break apart and they used it to sew me back together. If it was not for them, the Cage would’ve destroyed me within the first hundred years. They saved me_.” Sam said softly. He could feel tears building in the backs of his eyes and wasn’t ashamed of them. Not for this. They deserved his tears. “ _They kept piecing me back together, over and over, trying to save me, trying to hold on to me until someone could pull me out. Castiel tried at one point, but he only got my body. I was just a soul, shredded and broken and barely human anymore, but still a soul, and they tried their damndest to keep me alive. But the Cage grabs at you and pulls you in. It builds its tortures and throws you into it, like the biggest of all mind games, and it feels so real you do not even know any better until you are out. I was starting to lose myself to those. They did not… they were not sure if I would survive another. So they poured as much grace as they could into me and then they used the rest to, to launch me back_.” A few tears slipped free. “ _They destroyed themselves to send me out of there so that I could live._ ”

“It was worth it.” Michael reassured him. He stroked a hand over Sam’s hair and cupped the back of his head, smiling at him. It was both strange and familiar to see that smile. “You taught us what it was to be brothers again, Samuel. You taught us how to see the wrongness in what we were doing. We owed you everything. What we gave was a small price to pay.”

“ _And now it is my turn to return the favor._ ” Sam told him. With Gabriel sitting supportively beside him, Sam looked at the other archangel and reached out, hand and grace, to touch him. “ _You and Lucifer gave yourselves so that I might live. Now it is my turn to give a piece of myself as well so that you both might have the lives that you were supposed to have_.” It was the least that he could do. He could pay them back for how they’d saved him, over and over again. They had given their very lives for him. Deep down inside, Sam knew he could do no less than the same.

* * *

This time, when Sam went to meet with an archangel, he didn’t go alone.

His brother and the man who had been like a father to him helped to bait the trap. They prepared at the church and they helped to lure Lilith there, setting up the summoning spell that was needed to draw Lucifer’s first demon to them. The presence of the others would’ve been a glaring beacon that might’ve set the whole plan off. So the two humans went in, with Castiel to stand guard, and they did their part. They did the only thing they were really able to do. They set up the spell and they summoned her, binding her only seconds after she landed, thanks to a few sigils provided by Michael.

Once she was trapped, it was a simple matter for Castiel to fly the humans out and for Michael and Gabriel to come in with Sam in tow.

Only a brief moment was spared for the Winchesters to say their goodbyes. True to form, they didn’t say it in words. There were no flowery speeches about coming back home or making it out of this alive or anything like that. The two clasped one another in a tight hug. Holding his younger brother close, Dean buried himself against him, holding on for what he knew might be the very last chance he got to see Sam alive. If things went wrong, this could be most dangerous for Sam.

When they pulled apart, Sam gave him that same shy little grin he’d been giving him ever since he was a little boy, smiling up at his big brother with all the affection and admiration that Winchesters usually refused to show. “Be safe.” Sam said, two words he’d worked hard to know, to be able to say so that he could give them here to one of the people who mattered most in his life.”

“You too.” Dean said gruffly. Then he smiled, just a small quirking of lips. “Bitch.”

Sam’s smile grew blindingly bright. “Jerk.”

There was another brief hug, one for Dean and then one for Bobby as well. Quiet words were whispered against Sam’s ear that no one else around them heard. When they pulled apart, Sam’s eyes were shining with the tears that he refused to shed, and he nodded ever so slightly.

Then there was no more time. Castiel took the humans and Sam was left standing with an archangel at either side. He didn’t waste time on pleasantries. He didn’t bother to say anything to Lilith, or engage any of the questions or snarled out words she sent his way. He simply walked right up through the wards that held her and lifted one hand to her forehead. Gabriel’s words and grace inside of him guided him through the gesture as he placed his palm to her forehead and let his powers surge free. Light flashed blindingly bright around them as Lilith, the very first demon, fell dead at their feet. Sam had lived this before and he remembered both the joy that had come next and the horror that had swiftly followed.

This time, he was prepared. This time he knew what killing her meant. He wasn’t alone, afraid, thinking about how he’d just screwed the world. He didn’t have to hear Ruby taunting him or see Dean burst in, hoping that he’d be in enough time to save him only to discover that Sam had damned them all. This time, Gabriel was there, his hand on the small of Sam’s back, and Michael was there, holding lightly to Sam’s shoulder. They stood at the side of the room and watched as Lilith’s blood pooled into a pattern on the ground that slowly revealed a doorway – a doorway which led to horrors Sam would never, ever forget.

He watched the light rise up and start to fill the room and this time, though it was bright, it didn’t blind him. There was no terror, no fear of losing his eyes or his life. No God to yank them out and throw them safely onto an airplane. The beacon of Lucifer’s grace rose up out of the Cage and Sam’s eyes had the ability to actually _see_. He saw not just a light, but _Lucifer_ himself, as he was meant to be. The beautiful being that he was when he was free and home, without any vessel.

And when that light reached for him, Sam let it come. He stepped away from his bonded and the one who he privately called brother, and he moved right into that light, letting it wrap around him, shutting out the world. Sam opened up every shield and let his own grace free. He could feel Gabriel gasping behind him as he too was drawn into this, their bond too strong to keep him separate. Grace mingled with grace inside of that church and Sam offered up everything he had and everything he was to the being who had once been destined to use him to destroy the world.

Just as had happened with Michael, there was pain mixed in with this all, pain that came from a part of Sam’s grace breaking free, ripping itself off of him and joining the rest of the light. A part of Lucifer that had _stayed_ Lucifer inside of him now broke free to go to the one it belonged to. And Sam felt as it connected. He heard the gasp and then what sounded like a scream. The windows of the church shattered as the sound of Lucifer’s True Voice rang free. To human ears, it would’ve been a horrible screeching noise, blasting out glass and eardrums alike.

To Sam, it was _beautiful_.

Without a body, there was no way for Lucifer to actually reach out to Sam like this, not in a physical sense. But his grace wrapped itself around the hunter and cradled him close in a way Sam remembered – a way he would always remember. “ _Thank you._ ” The words echoed around them even as they filled the inside of Sam. “ _Thank you, Sam.”_

Another light joined them, the light of Michael’s grace, and then Gabriel’s as well, both the archangels leaving behind their bodies. They joined into the group and Sam was wrapped up in a sense of security and home that was so perfect his body wept.

He was still weeping when those lights drew back, slow and reluctant, and then shot off towards the sky.

Standing alone in the church with the empty vessels on either side of him, Sam stared up at the sky where the lights had vanished and continued to cry even as he smiled.

They’d done it. Everything he’d gone through, all the pain Sam had dealt with in his life, all of it had brought him here, brought him to this place where he’d had a second chance, a chance to do things right, and for once—he did. He’d done the right thing here. He’d saved the world and he’d saved his family. Both families. Dean and Bobby were safe – Ellen and Jo would be safe now, they would never go to Carthage, never have to die – Gabriel was alive, Michael and Lucifer were alive, and there was no apocalypse. They’d done it. _They’d done it._

They had won. They had saved everyone.

Lucifer was home – and, finally, so was Sam.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I felt the need to come back and add this note for those that are reading through and aren't happy with Gabe 'leaving'. In my head, I don't picture him staying gone. I see him going up with Michael, helping to welcome Lucifer home, helping him settle in, and coming back to Sam. I see him splitting his time between the two, primarily staying with Sam. I mean, with their bond and all, I don't ever see him staying away from Sam for long. :)

**Author's Note:**

> Please don't be afraid to leave comments and kudos. I love, love, love hearing from you all!


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